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<p>Hessu,</p>
<p>I've your proposal and see no issues with it. It would be good
to get this process brought into the open and visible so that
folks a) know what is expected, and b) know how to do that which
is expected.</p>
<p>Good job!</p>
<div class="moz-signature">Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - Author of APRSISCE
for Windows Mobile and Win32
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<p>PS. Chalk Hessu's e-mails up as also not getting through the
list but only showing up in the archives. Manually constructed
quoted reply from the archives follows.</p>
<p>On Thu Feb 17 03:12:25 EST 2022, Heikki Hannikainen hessu at
hes.iki.fi wrote:<br>
</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Hi,
I drafted a proposal for an APRS deviceid allocation policy. The idea is
to have a document which specifies what kind of things are allocated
unique APRS device identifiers (tocalls, mic-e type codes), what data goes
in the allocation, and how it gets done. This would in turn help people
requesting allocations create good requests, and help the team doing
allocations to do a consistent job.
The data contents described match what is *already* in the existing
database, and the database is already used by a number of applications in
this form and format, so at this point I would not change it much. There
is more space for discussion in the surrounding process and policy.
On "who gets an allocation": I think the main point is that everyone
creating and distributing APRS things (devices, software, services) should
get one, and the maintainers should only reject applications if they do
not meet the written criteria. Requests and responses should be public so
that the process is open and everyone sees if the allocations happen like
they should.
I added a clause saying unique, personal experimental stations should not
be allocated with identifiers, because I'm afraid there might be many
requests for such, and the database size may grow with such quite a lot,
if it becomes a norm to allocate vanity tocalls which are then only used
by a single station. There is one ticket from last week requesting 8
different tocalls for an individual, and I'm not entirely sure what to do
about it before getting more information from the requestor. In
experimental use & unique custom scripts it might be simpler and more
effective to just describe the station in the comment field.
I considered adding something about how unused identifiers could be
removed after a few years of inactivity, but couldn't come up with a good
wording, and some old devices may reappear later on, so I left it out.
Maybe it can be added later if necessary, if/when the database size is
annoyingly big.
The document focuses on destination callsign allocations, Mic-E specific
details are missing for now and might go to a second document.
PR: <a href="https://github.com/hessu/aprs-deviceid/pull/60" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://github.com/hessu/aprs-deviceid/pull/60</a>
Direct link to the proposal:
<a href="https://github.com/hessu/aprs-deviceid/blob/b748d0c367c2f5e736b2fb5f88b592cedf849921/ALLOCATING.md" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://github.com/hessu/aprs-deviceid/blob/b748d0c367c2f5e736b2fb5f88b592cedf849921/ALLOCATING.md</a>
Please read through it, and comment. If there are obvious speling
mistakes, weird English or such, you can just make a review note on Github
directly.
- Hessu, OH7LZB/AF5QT
</pre>
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</blockquote>
</p>
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