Use of "unassigned" in IANA registries

[Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]>]

On 1/14/11 12:23 AM, Lars Eggert wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2011-1-13, at 22:43, Michelle Cotton wrote:
>> Many believe it makes it very clear to the users of the registry
>> what is available for assignment.  Something we will be rolling out
>> soon (for those registries with a finite space) will be small
>> charts showing how much of the registry space is unassigned,
>> assigned and reserved (utilizing the unassigned entries).
>
> I mentioned in the past that the term "unassigned" to me at least
> doesn't make it sufficiently clear that IANA assignment is often
> needed before codepoints may be taken into use. We have several cases
> (the many different squats on TCP option numbers, for example) were
> people pick unassigned codepoints during development and only later
> realize that they should have registered them.
>
> If you want to explicitly list unassigned codepoints in the
> registries, I'm wondering if we can find a short phrase that makes it
> more clear that an IANA action is normally required - maybe
> "available for IANA assignment"?

If IANA *doesn't* explicitly list unassigned codepoints in the 
registries, do you think that would make the problem of unintentional 
squatting better or worse? I can see it going either way, but you have 
probably thought about this more than I.

The unintentional squatting problem might be reduced by a note in every 
registry that says "unassigned code points must be assigned by IANA" or 
some such wording.