On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 9:49 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:
Gimme a break. These kind of political issues aren't solved by "taking it upstream". Since when are politicians or people under the influence of politics known for their outstanding adherence to logic and reason? It's not such a simple technical thing that you can "take it upstream." If you have any idea how the ISO works you will wake up to the fact of how ridiculous that suggestion is. If Taiwan (ROC) can't get it to happen, what do you expect of us?
I didn't mean to imply that this was a simple problem to solve (and I agree with your aim for what that's worth). Simply that we do not want to make political decisions at all. This might be a straightforward one, but it sets a precedent and next time around we might be asked to decide on something less clear-cut.
But as has been suggested maybe Arch should choose a different upstream for this kind of information. Please open your mind a little, a false standard is no standard at all.
I had a look at ICU, but could not find any satisfactory documentation. They claim to take their data from the same ISO standard that we already use, but I could find no explanation for the discrepancy. To be a bit constructive: IMHO any proposal for a change must be made in general terms, and not by special-casing based on this issue. So, if we can find a new upstream that is comparable to ISO3166, but at the same time is somehow more "neutral", that would be something to consider I guess. I have to agree with Allan though, this issue is likely going nowhere. -t