[rpd] Decisions and summary on policy proposals discussed during the online Policy meeting (AFRINIC 32)

[Fernando Frediani]

In no part of the CPM says that Chairs' role is to suggest changes in 
the proposals, but to determine rough consensus has been achieved or not.

It was mentioned all they did was in good faith and I am not seeming 
people disputing that. However even considering they did in good faith 
if they committed a mistake they must repair that by taking some of the 
proposals out of last call and brig back to discussion.
I am hoping they are carefully evaluating all the recent comments and 
can take the right decision in the benefit of the region by the due date.

As I have been saying, more important than get a supposedly needed 
policy as soon as possible is to get it right.

Regards
Fernando

On 24/09/2020 20:38, lucilla fornaro wrote:

> Hello Jordi and everyone,

>

> I have to disagree with pretty much every point, in particular, for 

> what concerns points 1 and 2.

> First of all, the use of words should be highly pondered. Coercion is 

> a serious business and it is a tactic that violates the principles of 

> AFRINIC. You seem to say that Co-chairs used coercion as a threat of 

> penalty to induce authors to agree to avoid unpleasant outcomes. This 

> is completely wrong!

>

> Chairs job is to address major objections and suggest changes which is 

> part of their administrative work and Co-chairs did a very good job in 

> that sense. Furthermore, it is not forbidden and they did it in good 

> faith. I see no force and no coercion in any of their suggestions.

>

> regards,

> Lucilla

>

>

> Il giorno gio 24 set 2020 alle ore 01:06 JORDI PALET MARTINEZ via RPD 

> <rpd at afrinic.net <mailto:rpd at afrinic.net>> ha scritto:

>

>     HI AK, all,

>

>     I’ve confronted feelings myself. Somehow, I will like to support

>     how you tried to take decisions (pending on a concrete analysis

>     for each proposal, that I’ve not got the time to do yet) and the

>     way you declared consensus, so we can make some progress,

>     especially for finally resolving the Inter-RIR issue which I think

>     it is extremely urgent for AFRINIC assuming that it is

>     implementable and functional, otherwise, it is just a waste of time.

>

>     However, there are several points that are clearly violations of

>     the PDP. And I’m saying this even it is clearly against one of my

>     own proposal which reached consensus (based on your decision), but

>     as community, we must be clear and honest regardless of being

>     against us as authors.

>

>     Let me try to explain every point, following the PDP in our CPM:

>

>      1. Section 3.3. As it has been said earlier the chairs are there

>         to perform administrative functions (manage the meeting, the

>         list, determine consensus). There is no authorization in the

>         PDP to allow you to “force authors” to “change this or that”

>         if you want your proposal to reach consensus.

>      2. I fully understand the goal and I applaud it, but then it must

>         be given **the same opportunity** to all the proposals,

>         otherwise you’re acting in a discriminatory way towards

>         different proposals. At the end even in the extreme case, if

>         all the proposal reach consensus, it is not really relevant

>         because if authors agree or not to do changes that still don’t

>         like to the community, they will fail in the last call. So, it

>         is fine that you suggest to authors what do you believe are

>         “nits” to avoid failure in the last call, but not actually

>         coercing them to apply specific changes. In the meeting,

>         during the open mic, you were suggesting that the “simple PDP

>         update” can also reach consensus if I agree to some changes. I

>         was not capturing your point until I saw the video a day

>         after. Even in the video you can see that some audio/video is

>         missing, and the actual audio that I was getting during the

>         video was not good at that time. It is not a complain about

>         that specific proposal, just an example. So, do you think

>         that’s fair? If you really want to give the authors a chance

>         during the last call, the way to do it is **before** the open

>         mic, talking to them. In fact, as we discussed a few days ago,

>         you didn’t have to declare consensus in the open mic, as Alain

>         suggested, it can be done a couple of days after, so you’ve

>         time to coordinate with the authors, they can already send a

>         revised version, etc.

>      3. This PDP (3.4.3) doesn’t allow changes for the last call or

>         right before it. In other PDP of other RIRs there is an

>         explicit “editorial changes are allowed”. We don’t have that.

>         Even if we have that, what is an editorial change? We have

>         actually a problem with that in the last LACNIC meeting. For

>         me an editorial change is only correcting grammar or mistakes,

>         but not amending a full section. The practice that we followed

>         in AFRINIC has been to accept this type of changes only

>         (correct mistakes, remove superfluous text, clarify text) but

>         not **change conditions in the policies**. Again, I applaud

>         the goal, but is not right, and it is a clear matter for a

>         valid appeal.

>

>     Note something else, that I’ve said many times, in all the RIRs. I

>     see the chairs as super-heroes. I’m happy to prepare and defend

>     other 100 proposals, but not to be a chair, so my sincere

>     admiration towards you. However, that doesn’t imply that, as

>     humans, you can make mistakes and that’s also why the PDP provides

>     (3.5.1) a conflict resolution that includes raising the issues

>     with you. Otherwise, anyone in the community is able to appeal,

>     not just for any specific proposal, but for the general decisions

>     taken in the meeting. So my suggestion to avoid that is that you

>     should reconsider your decisions and clarify what is a

>     valid-objection and what is not for each proposal.

>

>     In the worst case, if the community is not satisfied we can also

>     follow the recall process (3.5.3), but hopefully we don’t need to

>     go for that and repeat the full meeting, etc. It will also take

>     time for the board to call for the recall committee, etc. Let’s

>     avoid it and that means that you react to the different open

>     questions, in general and for each proposal.

>

>     That said, providing solutions, for the most urgent policy that

>     this region needs, the Inter-RIR, we can resolve the issue, if it

>     fails the last call or there is an valid appeal, using the Varying

>     the process (3.6) PDP section. This still will mean we lost 2-3

>     months. The other alternative is what I proposed the other day.

>     Asking the board to call for a focussed meeting in December, may

>     be just for Inter-RIR, or may be 3-4 sessions of 1-2 hours for

>     sets of proposals, grouped in similar aspects.

>

>     I’m also still wainting your detailed responses, and also from the

>     staff (for some points) to my emails on the morning of 21/9/2020

>     regarding two of my proposals. Please follow up ASAP.

>

>     I will be sending, still very busy, sorry about that, specific

>     emails for each of the other policy proposals.

>

>     Regards,

>

>     Jordi

>

>     @jordipalet

>

>     El 22/9/20 23:46, "ABDULKARIM OLOYEDE" <oloyede.aa at unilorin.edu.ng

>     <mailto:oloyede.aa at unilorin.edu.ng>> escribió:

>

>     Dear Gregoire,

>

>     Thank you. Your concerns are noted. We would endure that we come

>     up with the best solution for the region based on openness,

>     transparency and fairness.  We have not broken any section of the

>     CPM rather we upheld the CPM. 3.2.3 of the CPM says

>

>

>           3.2.3 Fairness

>

>     The policies are to ensure fair distribution of resources and

>     facilitating the operation of the Internet. Actions are taken

>     within a reasonable period of time.

>

>     3.4.2 .... The Chair(s) determine(s) whether rough consensus has

>     been achieved during the Public Policy Meeting.

>

>     Co- Chair PDWG

>

>     On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 5:30 PM Gregoire EHOUMI

>     <gregoire.ehoumi at yahoo.fr <mailto:gregoire.ehoumi at yahoo.fr>> wrote:

>

>         Dear Co-chairs and WG

>

>

>         During the AFRINIC-32 PPM which was held last week, the

>         proceedings and decisions made by cochairs, raised many

>         concerns. Below are some of them.

>         The video of the meeting is publicly available.

>

>

>         *Concern-1  objections management

>         ————*

>         cochairs chose some objections raised and even not-raised, did

>         not say why comments and explanations provided by authors and

>         the participants on the raised and discussed issues were

>         unsatisfactory.

>

>         Few examples

>

>         ⁃ Abuse contact proposal

>

>         The valid and unresolved objections according to co-chairs

>         decisions were:

>         • Definition of abuse

>         • GDPR compliance

>         • Impact of legacy resources

>

>

>         ⁃ RPKI ROAs for Unallocated and Unassigned AFRINIC Address Spaces

>

>         The valid and unresolved objections according to cochairs were:

>         • AS0 ROA validity

>         • Certain fear in the community that this proposal may help

>         staff reclaim resources if members failed to pay membership fees.

>         • Lack of a certain mitigation provision APNIC has in their policy

>

>         -WG guidelines and procedures

>

>         The valid and unresolved objections according to cochairs were:

>

>         • the proposed appointment of cochairs  by consensus will

>         create more problems for this community.

>         • Cochairs should not have hands in consensus

>         • also Board interference.

>

>         ⁃ Inter-RIR transfer proposals

>

>         On the 3 proposals being discussed

>

>         Cochairs decided that :

>         • one is far from reaching consensus as incompatible with ARIN

>         as per staff.

>         • The other 2 are closer

>

>

>         *

>         Concern-2 fairness in the proceeding

>         ——————————————————*

>         • When rendering their decisions and contrary to what was

>         announced, Cochairs did not question all authors of transfer

>         policy proposals showing bias

>

>         • Staff’s demand to the WG  to allow them to request official

>         compatibility analysis on each of the proposals from other

>         RIRs was denied

>

>         • Authors were not even given chance to respond to the point

>         with ARIN

>

>

>         *Concern-3 unilateral decisions by cochairs

>         ————————————————————*

>         • cochairs decided that Afrinic service region need an

>         inter-RIR transfer policy as matter as urgency  and can’t wait

>         anymore

>

>         • Cochairs decided that among the 3 proposals, the one which

>         aims to establish an efficient and business-friendly mechanism

>         to allow a number of resources to be transferred from/to other

>         regions, should be pushed forward

>

>         • Cochairs refused to consider the issues and the

>         implementation challenges  raised by the staff impact

>         assessment on proposal

>

>         • Cochairs decided on which amendments should be made to the

>         selected proposal  for it to move forward.

>

>         1- Add 12 months delay for a source to be eligible to receive

>         allocation from AFRINIC

>

>         2- Remove clause for legacy status after transfer

>

>         3-Fix clarity on notifications to the other RIRs after the

>         transfer

>

>         It is obvious that 1) contradicts both problem statement and

>         solution of the proposal preferred by cochairs.

>

>         Cochairs appear to be deciding and injecting new issues not

>         previously mentioned in working group. Not following due

>         process of hearing authors and the hurry to decide for working

>         group is unacceptable. The cochairs report must rather provide

>         an open issues list of outstanding issues for working group to

>         deliberate on. There had been no attempt by cochairs to gauge

>         consensus throughout the meeting.

>

>         In the view of all these violations of the PDP, I urge you to

>         reconsider all decisions made during the last PPM and give

>         chance to the WG to appropriately address the open issues and

>         come to the best conclusions for the region.

>

>         --

>         Gregoire Ehoumi ( on behalf of the authors of WG guidelines

>         and procedures and AFRINIC Number Ressources transfer proposals)

>

>         -------- Original message --------

>

>         From: ABDULKARIM OLOYEDE <oloyede.aa at unilorin.edu.ng

>         <mailto:oloyede.aa at unilorin.edu.ng>>

>

>         Date: 2020-09-20 8:06 p.m. (GMT-05:00)

>

>         To: rpd List <rpd at afrinic.net <mailto:rpd at afrinic.net>>

>

>         Subject: [rpd] Decisions and summary on policy proposals

>         discussed during the online Policy meeting (AFRINIC 32)

>

>

>         Dear PDWG Members,

>

>          Please find below a summary for each of the proposal

>         discussed during the just concluded online policy meeting of

>         AFRINIC 32

>

>         1.Simple PDP Update

>

>         This policy defines consensus. It also proposes that a policy

>         discussed at the PPM does not need to come back for another

>         PPM for the Co-chairs to arrive at a decision. This can help

>         in streamlining the work during the PPM and encourages people

>         to use the mailing list.

>

>         There were lots of irrelevant objections on the mailing list

>         such as someone registering many emails. We believe that this

>         does not matter because rough consensus is not about numbers

>         but quality objections.

>

>         However, there is strong opposition to this policy based on

>         the following:

>

>         a.Oppose the policy because of the way the consensus is

>         reached. This proposal proposes that the consensus be reached

>         through a balance of the mailing list/forum and not at the

>         PPM. This endangers fair consensus and hijacks the

>         policymaking process. Based on experience, it is during the

>         PPM that most community members focus on policies.

>

>         b.Issues around how the chairs should drop proposals.

>

>         c.Trust in the mailing list: Some strongly believe that

>         anonymous contribution should be allowed while some believes

>         it should not.

>

>         d.Issues around having more than 1 PPM per year and Online PPM

>         because of volunteer burnout. We are all volunteers and it’s a

>         night job for us. More PPMs mean more time to volunteer and

>         more chances for burnouts

>

>         e.Some members of the Community thinks only burning or

>         polarizing issues should be brought to the PPM.

>

>         Chairs Decision:   No Consensus

>

>         2.PDP Working Group

>

>         This proposal aims at allowing most of the decisions including

>         chair elections to be determined via consensus. This can be

>         reasonable when the community has the same goal. However,

>         there were a number of objections to it. These are:

>

>         a.Entrusting the WG to make their decisions by consensus and

>         the appointment of their co-chairs by consensus do not make

>         sense and is only utopic.

>

>         b.People are not policy proposals, and thus choosing by

>         consensus is splitting hairs with the election process we

>         already have. Save the consensus for the proposals, and the

>         election for people.

>

>         c.Consensus may even take months, and this can’t fly when we

>         want to put people in the vacant roles.

>

>         d.Co-chairs should not have a hand in the consensus, but only

>         sit back and let the community decide for themselves.

>         Additionally, the consensus process is not feasible with a

>         deadline.

>

>         e.Focus on polishing the current electoral process instead of

>         complicating other untested forms of “election”.

>

>         f.The current status quo’s election should be the only option

>         in choosing for the roles, and not through less transparent means.

>

>         g.Board would be interfering too much on issues that deal with PDP

>

>         Chairs Decision: No Consensus

>

>         3.Chairs Election Process

>

>         This proposal aims at introducing an online voting system for

>         the Co-Chairs election. The following are the opposition to

>         this proposal.

>

>         a.This policy reduces participation. Equal representation is

>         violated because the board has unprecedented power.

>

>         b.There is also not enough information on the logistics of the

>         vote (e-voting).

>

>         c.There is a contradiction on when the term ends during the

>         meeting. “The term ends during the first PPM corresponding to

>         the end of the term for which they were appointed” is not

>         clear enough, and “A term may begin or end no sooner than the

>         first day of the PPM and no later than the last day of the PPM

>         as determined by mutual agreement of the current Chair and the

>         new Chair” contradicts each other.

>

>         d.Gender restriction on 3.3.1.3 , some community members argue

>         it is impractical and maybe even unfair if we force both

>         chairs to have different genders.

>

>         e.Issues around which voter's register should be adopted

>

>         Chairs Decision: No Consensus

>

>         4.Board Prerogatives

>

>         This proposal aims at clarifying how the board and the PDWG

>         works. However, there were a few oppositions to this proposal

>         except for a specific section.

>

>         a.It seems like a piecemeal approach to dealing with issues.

>

>         b.Opposition to the section below

>

>         /“As an exception of the preceding paragraph, in the absence

>         of elections processes for aspects related to the PDP

>         (co-chairs, appeal committee), those aspects will be still

>         handled by the board in consultation with the community.

>         However, this is also a temporary measure and also specific

>         draft policy proposals should be introduced for that/”. The

>         authors agreed to remove the above section hence

>

>         Chairs Decision: Consensus provided the above section is removed

>

>         5.Policy Compliance Dashboard

>

>         The policy proposal seeks to provide a framework or a policy

>         compliance dashboard be developed by AFRINIC and incorporated

>         in myAFRINIC (and future member’s communication platforms). It

>         will allow a periodic review of the policy compliance status

>         of each member. It will also enable members to receive

>         automated notifications for any issue. Staff will receive

>         repeated warnings of lack of compliance or severe violations

>         enshrined in the CPM. However, there are several oppositions

>         to this proposal, such as:

>

>         a.This policy seems to be redundant of the status quo as

>         violations are already checked and processed by the human staff.

>

>         b.There is already an existing system of guidelines on keeping

>         track of the violations of members.

>

>         c.The policy is not binding and does not enforce members

>         actually to follow the rules and not violate policies.

>

>         d.Ignorance could be a convenient excuse for violations

>         because one could claim that they never got notified about

>         their violations.

>

>         e.There is no comprehensive system on how the board should

>         take proper actions once members violate policies, nor does it

>         give guidelines based on the severity of the violations.

>

>         f.This policy takes away resources that could be used for more

>         beneficial pursuits to AFRINIC for something existing in the

>         system.

>

>         g.It an administrative process, and this should be left to staff

>

>         Chairs Decision:  NO rough Consensus

>

>         6.Abuse Contact Update

>

>         The proposal makes it mandatory for AFRINIC to include in each

>         resource registration, a contact where network abuse from

>         users of those resources will be reported. The proposal whois

>         DB attribute (abuse-c) to be used to publish abuse public

>         contact information. There’s also a process to ensure that the

>         recipient must receive abuse report and that contacts are

>         validated by AFRINIC regularly. However, there some opposition

>         to the proposal there are:

>

>         a.Staff analysis on how it affects legacy holder not

>         conclusive (not sure why this should affect legacy holders)

>

>         b.The proposal doesn’t state what will be the consequences of

>         one member fails to comply. Why are we creating the abuse

>         contact when there is no consequence for not providing the

>         abuse contact

>

>         c.Abuse contact email and issues with GDPR concerning the

>         whois database

>

>         d.No proper definition of the term Abuse

>

>         e.To force members to reply to their abuse email is not in the

>         scope of AFRINIC.

>

>         Chairs Decision: No rough consensus

>

>         7.RPKI ROAs for Unallocated and Unassigned AFRINIC Address Space

>

>         The proposal instructs AFRINIC to create ROAs for all

>         unallocated and unassigned address space under its control.

>         This will enable networks performing RPKI-based BGP Origin

>         Validation to easily reject all the bogon announcements

>         covering resources managed by AFRINIC. However, there are many

>         oppositions such as:

>

>         a.Allowing resource holders to create AS0/ ROA will lead to an

>         increase of even more invalid prefixes in the routing table.

>

>         b.Revocation time of AS0 state, and the time for new

>         allocation doesn’t match.

>

>         c.Other RIRs don’t have a similar the policy therefore, it can

>         not be effective

>

>         d.This will become a uniform policy if it is not globally

>         implemented, which causes additional stress.

>

>         e.Validity period:   if members decide to implement it, is it

>         not better to recover the space if it is kept unused for too long?

>

>         f.How do we revoke the ROA? How long does it take to revoke it

>         (chain/ refreshing )?

>

>         g.What happens if AFRINIC accidentally issues a ROA for an

>         address in error?

>

>         h.It also might affect the neighbours and involves monitoring

>         of unallocated spaces.

>

>         i.Possibility of it being used against a member who is yet to

>         pay dues.

>

>         Suggestions were made to improve the policy such as

>

>         a)The automatic creation of AS0 ROAs should be limited to

>         space that has never been allocated by an RIR or part of a

>         legacy allocation.

>

>         b)AFRINIC should require the explicit consent of the previous

>         holder to issue AS0 ROAs in respect of re-claimed, returned,

>         etc, space.

>

>         c)Any ROAs issued under this policy should be issued and

>         published in a way that makes it operationally easy for a

>         relying party to ignore them (probably by issuing under a

>         separate TA).

>

>         d)The proposal should include the clause “as used in APNIC as

>         to dues not paid on time.”

>

>         Chairs Decision: No consensus

>

>         8.IPv4 Inter-RIR Resource Transfers (Comprehensive Scope)

>

>         The proposal puts in place a mechanism to transfer IPv4 and

>         (some ASN) resources between AFRINIC and other RIRs and

>         between AFRINIC members/entities. Some conditions are attached

>         to the source and recipient based on need and disclosure made.

>         The inter-RIR transfers will be suspended if the number of

>         outgoing IPv4 addresses exceeds the incoming ones for six

>         consecutive months. However, there are oppositions to it

>

>         a.ASN Transfer is not necessary

>

>         b.Issue of board inferring: no board in all of the five RIRs

>         have ever been involved in deciding a transfer or allocating

>         IP address. It is not the board's responsibility.

>

>         c.Suspending clause with no reinstalling clause. This mainly

>         makes the policy potentially invalid.

>

>         Chairs Decision: No consensus.

>

>         9.AFRINIC Number Resource Transfer

>

>         a.Not realistic for one-way inter RIR resource transfer as it

>         has to be reciprocal. One way would never happen as only

>         global resources can come in and go out

>

>         b.It would be difficult for the recipient to follow the rules

>         of AFRINIC if they are not in the African region.

>

>         c.No need for ASN transfer. If one is moving regions and

>         doesn't have an ASN in the new region, it can request and

>         receive from the local RIRs

>

>         d.Additional attributes create none-operational complexity in

>         the whois database.

>

>         Chairs Decision: No consensus.

>

>         10.Resource Transfer Policy

>

>         This proposal aims to introduce Inter RIR transfer. However,

>         it has the following opposition

>

>         a.Issues with Legacy holder transfer is potentially considered

>         none-reciprocal by ARIN

>

>         b.Potential abuse of AFRINIC free pool without the time limit

>         of receiving an allocation from AFRINIC.

>

>         Chairs Decision: The proposal is the least contested of all

>         the 3 competing proposals. However because of the community’s

>         desire and clear expression for the  need for an Inter RIR

>         transfer, we, the Co-chairs, believe that in the interest of

>         the community we should focus on a proposal rather than

>         several similar ones. This desire was clearly expressed at the

>         AFRINIC 31 meeting in Angola. Therefore, We suggest that the

>         authors of this proposal make the following amendments:

>

>         ·5.7.3.2 Source entities are not eligible to receive further

>         IPv4 allocations or assignments from AFRINIC for 12 months

>         period after the transfer.

>

>         ·5.7.4.3. Transferred legacy resources will still be regarded

>         as legacy resources.

>

>         Chairs Decision: Provided that the above are amended, the

>         decisions is Rough Consensus is achieved

>

>         Based on the above, The updated version of the follow proposal

>         which achieved rough consensus would be posted on the PDWG

>         website

>

>         *1.**Board Prerogatives *

>

>         *2.**Resource Transfer Policy*

>

>         Therefore, these two policies are now on last call.

>

>

>         Co-Chair

>

>         PDWG

>

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