[ppml] Reaction to my policy proposals. Why was Whois AUP aba ndoned?

[william at elan.net]

> This policy was abandoned for the reason of incorporating it into current
> policy; at least that is what I understood. 

That is semantics:
 A changes B
 A extendes B
 A is merged with B
 A incorporated into B
 etc.

And in the past AC showed no interest in working on this policy before and 
failed in all the opportunities:
1. I expressed interest in general whois aup at Eugene meeting, I was told 
by ARIN to prepare a policy proposal on this which I did. Never in that 
time between meetings was I ever contacted by AC on the issue and I would 
not have prepared my proposal if I knew AC was working on the issue.
2. Before Whois AUP was proposed as a policy an open draft was posted to 
ppml. I did not receive any comments from members of AC on this.
3. After becoming a policy proposal, there was one month given to comment 
on the proposal and there again weren't any comments by AC
4. On the live meeting there was time to comment, comments went from the 
floor but not from the AC (beyond asking how this changes current bulk 
whois policy, I belive AC did not realize I meant to replace it entirely)


And the bigger problem is that AC has exceeded its authority and what it 
is supposed todo with new policy proposal based on current policy making 
rules. AC is supposed to judge support & consensus on any given proposal 
and do the following:
 1. If proposal has little or no support -
      AC can abandon it and possibly use its ideas in another proposal
 2. If proposal has some support but not everybody agrees with it or if 
    problems are found -
      AC is supposed to continue proposal for futher discussions and 
      work with authors to bring new version for next meeting that would 
      have more support and would have previous problems fixed
 3. If proposal has majority or greater support (general concensus) but 
    some flaws in wording or clarifications are necessary - 
      AC is supposed to work with the author to make necessary changes in 
      wording and then send the proposal to ppml for additional discussions
      and then to BoT and to last call. Generally it would not need to go 
      to additional public meeting having already received support there.
 4. If proposal is supported by everyone as is - 
      AC is supposed to without modifications send to last call and to BoT

For all previous proposals and in previous meetings the above was pretty 
much what AC did, so even proposals that have some (but not even 50%) 
support in the way they were written were continued to new versions. Very 
few proposals were abandoned before, but this was not the case for this 
meeting and this is where AC exceeded its authority and on this meeting if 
you look at it - all proposals that were not brought in by memberts of AC 
or BoT were abandoned - this is even where proposals had greater majority 
support.

Now Whois AUP proposal clearly falls into #3 above. Pretty much everybody 
on the meeting supported it, same on the mailing list. But in both cases 
several people asked for clarifications of some details (such as non 
policy operation issues on how to do authentication for bulk whois amd 
policy issues on what previous policies/aup proposal obsolutes). This is 
all fixabled without great changes to proposal generally by modifiying 
some words and by adding explanation section above or below on what would 
be obsoluted and how proposal would fit into existing policies. 

As far as I'm concerned AC had no right to abondon the proposal, rather it 
should have contacted me if they wanted some changes and we could then bring
up new version to last call and get it done with and approved fairly quickly.
Besides that, having this done quickly would be great benefit to ARIN as 
there is good chance after adaption, the load on ARIN whois servers can go 
down 25-50% by having some of that moved to automatic bulk whois procedure.
That is both financial and operational gain for everybody. And I (and couple
other people) have interest in this for research purposes as well - for 
example to create real-time bogons list that is more specific then /8s.

I think ARIN AC can still save its face and time for everybody having to 
review the proposal again if it reversed the decision to abandon the 
proposal. So I'm going to do the following:
1. Write new version with modifications necessary to clarify some points.
  This version will be sent as new proposal by end of next week. Please 
  note that if AC does not reverse current decision, the version will  
  still go through and I'm not going to ask for any AC involvement again. 
  (If there are modification to policy making as BoT is suggesting, I have 
   enough additional people who will back me up on whois aup that I do not 
   need to get AC involved and I will not)
2. Write official letter of appeal to AC and request that it convine with
all AC memberts participating and reverse decision to abandon the proposal
on grounds that its exceeded it authority and improperly judged support of 
the proposal when it abandoneded it.

Both of the above you'll see by end of this week or next depending on how 
much extra time I have (I'm still in midwest and not back im my office..)

But be assured, if the decision to abandone is not reversed, by next 
meeting the same proposal will be back and then I'll directly ask what 
support it has as-is (hopefully then all things will be clear in new 
version) and I will not seek any AC involvement (see above on all the 
opportunities it had where it failed to even try).

---
William Leibzon
Elan Communications Inc. 
william at elan.net