[rpd] appeal about last call decision on AFPUB-2019-GEN-006-DRAFT01 "RPKI ROAs for Unallocated and Unassigned AFRINIC Address Space"

[JORDI PALET MARTINEZ]

Dear Appeal Committee,

We are appealing against the declaration of no-consensus made by the PDWG co-chairs on 29th of January (https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/010326.html), after the previous declaration of consensus in the last PPM, indicating "some critical objections", following CPM 3.5.2.

There was not an explicit indication of what are those "critical objections", and instead, the co-authors, and other community members have addressed all them.

It is also noticeable that those objections are not "critical" and they were raised already during the PPM and consensus was declared. It is also interesting that people from the community, which are recognized experts, and was opposing to every other policy proposal during the PPM said "this is a good one" (speaking from top of my head, while writing this appeal, so maybe the wording is not precise).

In fact, those objections could be applied to any policy proposal, as they are related to "human errors, implementation, etc.", which will mean that reverting this consensus decision in this proposal, will make clearly vulnerable the complete PDP because the same arguments can be repeated for any other proposal, and the implementation is out of the scope of a policy proposal, unless the proposal enters in those details or the staff has already provided any warning about concrete issues during the proposal presentation, which was not the case.

In fact, this proposal, using the same text, has reached consensus in APNIC, ratified by the board, and it is being implemented, so if the APNIC staff has not provided non-resolvable implementations issues, it is difficult to believe that they may happen in AFRINIC (or any other RIR).

Furthermore, we believe that the explanations provided during the last call to every objection were successfully refuted, not just by co-authors, but also by other member of the community, as already mention before, and none of them suggested that any change in the proposal is required. As a consequence, our understanding is that those objections are not sustained and understanding the meaning of rough consensus and last call, as per RFC7282, which all the RIR PDPs are based upon.

There is also a generic and non-justified objection, repeated several times, regarding the miss-usage of the RPKI by governments, which is not the case, and it is not something that could be done by means of this proposal, but instead, enacting government control over the RIRs. It seems to indicate that the authors of those objections don't have a complete or precise view or knowledge about the RIRs and even less about RPKI and the related RFCs.

The authors requested the objectors to justify that, and answers were not provided, just repetitions of the same objection. It is clear that neither for the consensus declaration in the mailing list or PPM and even less in the last call, a non-clearly-justified objection can be taken in consideration to reverse the consensus decision.

That original co-chairs email was not providing a rational for that decision, and instead it suggested that more discussion was needed, but it was no clear, if they were extending the last call (CPM 3.4.3), and after insisting today, they send a reconfirmation (https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/010391.html) or that decision.

It should be noted that we have asked the chairs in several occasions to reconsider their decision, following CPM 3.5.1 (https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/010327.html, https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/010350.html, https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/010377.html, https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/010380.html, https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/010383.html), and no further explanation of the "critical objections" and a clear rational for defining the critical objections and if the responses from authors and community addressed them, as we believe clearly is the case, has been provided.

We have replied again to the co-chairs response (https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/010392.html), which hopefully can also help the Appeal Committee to declare that the last call has succeeded and consequently the consensus decision needs to be sustained and the proposal needs to be sent to the board for ratification, following the PDP.

The authors are also convinced, according to the discussion in the list, that other community members are supporting this appeal, even if this is not needed according to CPM 3.5.1.

We remain at your dispossal for further clarifications which may help to resolve this appeal as soon as possible.

Thanks in avance for your work!

Regards,
Jordi
@jordipalet
 
 



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