[rpd] Chair's Decision on Policy Proposal on Last call: Resource

[ABDULKARIM OLOYEDE]

Dear Community,
You would recall that the Resource Transfer Policy was recalled some few
weeks ago to allow for further discussion on the proposal within the
Community. Having allowed and exhausted the discussions and comments from
the Community, we are now satisfied that we have given more than enough
time for this discussion. Here are our observations on the proposal in
question.
1. The authors have been very flexible in making changes to the proposal.
Majority of the suggestions made to improve the proposal without
contradicting some other aspects of the proposal were agreed to by the
authors in arriving at the latest version.
2. A large number of community members supports this proposal. We carefully
went through all comments hence the reason we took longer than a week
extension as earlier suggested by the co-chairs.
3. Most (no all) of those who are opposed to this proposal are authors to a
competing proposal or are in support of a competing proposal. We see
nothing wrong in this, but, we Co-Chairs had to sieve observations and
critically look beyond who is making the observation/comment but the
substance of the comment.  However, we noticed a partner of it is either my
proposal or no other proposal.  Events in the most powerful country of the
world in the last few days have also helped us to understand better that
some people would make noise and allegations without any proof and that
should not be enough reason to truncate a well guided and fair process.
4. Most of the comments does not deal with the nitty-gritty of the
proposal; rather, they were procedural. Co-chairs were accused of not
following the procedure without any proof to back this up. We were asked to
reverse our decision and allowed for more discussion on the proposal. We
did this, and the same person who asked us to do this was one of the first
people to accuse of taking another wrong and unprecedented decision. We
asked this same person to explain who we have violated the CPM, but we had
no response from him, but he responds to other issues. It should be on
record that this is not the first time co-chairs have had enough reason to
change their decisions and we are sure this would not be the last.
5. *We believe that the proposal  AFPUB-2019-V4-003-DRAFT04 (Resource
Transfer Policy) has successfully reached Consensus and we shall be
forwarding same to the AFRINIC board for ratification. *
6. However, just like the latest impact analysis the proposal on Board
prerogative on the PDP which has also reached Consensus is suggesting
(which we think is the most reasonable way forward) we shall also want to
suggest that the only outstanding issue raised on AFPUB-2019-V4-003-DRAFT04
(Resource Transfer Policy) is the issue related to the status of legacy
holders.
7. Our justification for arriving at Consensus without exhausting this
issue was based on the fact that we Co-chairs could not agree on which of
the two options (Legacy remaining legacy and otherwise) is more acceptable
to the Community. Some do favour the option of Legacy holders remaining
legacy while others would like things to be the other way round. It is
difficult for us to make a call on this issue because it depends on one's
perspective and we have seen how heated any debate on legacy resources can
be from some recent exchange on one of the other AFRINIC mailing lists.
Therefore we believe that the best option is to have this discussion
separate while avoiding throwing away the baby with the bathwater on this
proposal. The authors also informed the Co-chairs that they do not mind
whichever way the Community chooses. Therefore we believe this should not
determine the faith of this proposal. We strongly believe that the reason
why we have so many unresolved proposals is due to that fact that we often
throw away the baby with the bathwater.
8. We have also noticed that there seems to be some confusion as to what
changes were made during the last call. We would like to clear the air on
this, the changes that we asked the authors to make in
https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/011372.html
    <https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/011372.html>were made
before the policy went into the last call. Our decision on the last call on
this proposal was subjected to those changes.
9 Our decision is also based on the fact that we asked for comments and
even last comments, and there were only a few responses or even none.
10. On the issue of reciprocity of the proposal, we have taken a look at
the proposal and that of the other RIRs, and we believe that this proposal
is reciprocal. Should it not be reciprocal, an amendment can be proposed in
future.
11. We truly understand that some people would disagree with us, but it is
only fair that issues and actions are based on facts.
Finally, we think it is crucial that we explain how we arrived at our
decisions to the Community in the spirit of openness and fairness.

Thanks
Co-Chair
PDWG

-- 
Website <http://www.unilorin.edu.ng>, Weekly Bulletin 
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