roque,
at the recent apnic policy sig meeting, where these proposals were
discussed, okutani izumi said something that made, at least for me, a
clear motivation for this.
under current policy, when we near the end of the iana free pool, an rir
can not be sure if it will get a last request or if not. it is not
predictable because it depends on timing and the other rirs.
this is like a game we have in my culture (and i would guess is also in
many others), 'musical chairs', where n players have n-1 chairs which
they walk around until the music stops, and they all try to sit in a
chair. of course, one will not get a chair and is eliminated. (the
game continues with n-1 players having n-2 chairs, but that is not
relevant here.)
current policy makes it terribly hard for an rir to plan for the last /8
because they do not know if they will actually get one. with the jpnic
proposal, they can plan for at least one /8, and set policy accordingly.
and apnic, for one, has strong sentiment that this last /8 should be
used in the region with specific special policy.
now, it is true that one can not know if and how much an rir will get
from the iana in the allocation just before the last one. but the jpnic
proposal at least removes the uncertainty by one large step.
this actually made sense to me.
randy