<insert commentary about fictional technical reason for reservation of 223.255.255.0/24>
Maybe that's why 223.255.255/24 should be forever reserved.
Thankfully, there is no technical reason for a reservation of 223.255.255.0/24. Idiotic people and equipment will crop up all over the address space, and we don't reserve that either.
--Michael Dillon
As the one who originally brought this up in nanog, the sole reason why the conversation came up was documentation. The last known RFC on the matter stated that 223.255.255.0/24 was reserved but that it MAY be allocated in the future. The part that was ambiguous to APNIC and the network community was what status 223.255.255.0/24 was in. It could be inferred by IANA's allocation, that it was no longer reserved (in which case the RFC should be updated to reflect that it USED to be reserved), or equally could be inferred that APNIC was provided 223/8 - 223.255.255.0/24, since the last known statement on the matter still said it is presently reserved. Let's not confuse people with made up technical reasons for the reservation. The issue is solely a documentation/ambiguity problem.