It's important to be aware of the timeline but this anniversary might also be a good time to look back at the history and think about the impact this assignment has made.
What *new* technologies has been developed because of this network? Which crises have been mitigated using this network? Have it helped to spread the HAM radio "spirit" to the young people? What other good things have this network done?
It's very sad for me to say that the only thing I can see about this network is a bunch of guys trying to stick with old technology (RIP? please.) at all cost and arguing who is more important in a tree of people allocating numbers.
A /8 network is a great value nowadays, the IPv4 especially in Europe is in a huge crisis and getting new addresses is nearly impossible. From the other hand most of the address space in this network is unused but when you try to request allocation for yourself you can easily get rejected because of silly reasons. (I didn't even try to request one for myself after my friends showed me the coordinator responses.)
There might be some things going on the used parts of the network but I couldn't find any example that could be genuinely useful to the world.
Could you please prove me wrong or if I'm right try to consider sharing the address space with a "new" movement of hacking and hackerspaces? HAM radio should be all about hacking [1] but frankly speaking I don't see much of it in HAM radio space these days. There are some exceptions - i.e. "OFDM modem" thread from the last days but there are as rare as freakin' unicorns.
This message is not meant to be mean. I'm just trying to pinpoint some things I've seen as an observer of this network and HAM radio (mostly in Poland but also the "worldwide" parts) and share some ideas how the things can be done better and provide a better value to the whole world.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture
-- I wish you all the best SQ9PID