* David Farmer
On 8/4/13 09:48 , Tore Anderson wrote:
* David Farmer
I believe the primary definition of fairness the RIR communities have been using is, "only those that have *verified operational need* get Internet number resources".
Do you have a link or reference? (Tried Google, no hits.)
Try goal #1 in section #1 of RFC 2050. See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2050#section-1
Written in a time of abundance long ago, where the fairness of the RIRs' "all you can eat buffet" worked as there was enough for everyone. That's not the world we live in today, and besides the document is about to be superseded by the 2050-bis:
And in slightly different words, try goal #1 in section #2 of RFC 2050-bis. See http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-housley-rfc2050bis-02#section-2
...which happens to contain exactly 0 occurrences of the string "fair".
Let me get this straight, are you saying here that our current goal of fairness in our current state of scarcity is to protect the *feelings* of the LIRs who return home from the second-hand market empty-handed? (Currently 96-97% of them.)
You always have to look at fairness from the perspective of those who don't get what they want. Fairness isn't usually an issue raised by those that get what they want.
Yes, I'm sure that the LIRs that didn't get the resources they wanted (and "needed") feel it's a great consolation to know that their competitors with deeper pockets also "needed" the resources in order to absorb the customer growth they now are unable to take on themselves. Or how starving folks around the globe surely must feel that their situation is "fair", as Tore and David managed to finish all the food on their dinner plates today. (We "needed" it, after all.) Sorry. I just don't at all buy the argument that the unprivileged are treated "fair" just because the privileged happened to "need". Everyone "needs", yet not everyone gets. The way I see it, the scarcity situation is going to result in unfairness no matter what and there's nothing our current policy nor 2013-03 can do about it.
Personally, I'm not fundamentally opposed to operational need going away, especially the current overly bureaucratic way it is determined, if you can find something that replaces it that provides some sense of fairness that you seem to agree is necessary.
Personally I don't think it is at all necessary to keep the philosophical "fairness" goal in the policy, as we have no working mechanism in the policy that actually ensure any form of fair distribution in this time of scarcity. That's my pragmatic view. However there were a couple of other WG participants who felt that it should be left in there for high-level philosophical and political reasons, and to ensure the door is kept open for a potential future discussion of "what is fair nowadays and how do we go about enforcing it exactly"? I have no problem with that per se, hence my offer to leave it in there. Tore