John R. Levine wrote:
The only effort involved on the IETF's jurisdiction was to stop squatting on 240/4 and perhaps maybe some other small pieces of IPv4 that could possibly be better used elsewhere by others who may choose to do so.
The IETF is not the Network Police, and all IETF standards are entirely voluntary.
And that is exactly why they said that even though they think it might possibly entail similar effort to deployment of IPv6 and that IPv6 is supposed to obsolete IPv4 before any such effort can be realized, they would be amenable to reclassifying 240/4 as anything other than reserved, removing that barrier from those whom may voluntarily decide to follow that updated standard, should they find the time to squeeze in another project the same size and effort of IPv6 into their spare time. Seems the IETF does indeed think it is the network police. And that they get to decide winners and losers.
Nothing is keeping you from persuading people to change their software to treat class E addresses as routable other than the detail that the idea is silly.
R's, John
And indeed, they have done so. Now who looks silly? Joe