[arch-general] Country Name (ISO-3116) Issues

[Zero, Chien-An Cho]

Hello,

First of all, I am sorry to bring political issues to here. I have
been using ArchLinux for years, deployed on many servers, though I'm
not joining the community until now. The recent changes to the
ArchLinux webpages (ex. Downloads, Mirror Status) is really offending
Taiwanese people. I would like to bring up this issue, and preferably
to resolve this issue.

I have posted this message on the forum:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=144315 . The moderator
suggested me to post on arch-general, so here it is. :)
There is also a bug tracking issue submitted by other Taiwanese user
that I'm requesting for reopen here:
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/30444

The following text is the same as the post on forum, except a few
modification to make text smoother.

The recent changes on the download page named Taiwan as Taiwan,
Province of China, which is not reflecting the truth that Taiwan is a
independent country which having its own government. I think this
might be caused by following the ISO-3166 country name list standard.
However, I don't think ISO-3166 is a good list when it comes to the
country name.

Many open source communities have encountered this problem before.
Most of them understand that ISO-3166 is not really a neutral list
that we all hope for, and thus made switch to a separate maintained
country list. For example, FreeBSD[1], Rails[2], Debian[3]. Many big
commercial entities also opt not to use "Taiwan, PRC" in their country
list, like: Apple[4], IBM[5], also try Google, Facebook, Twitter, et
cetra. A possible solution might be using the country name list from
ICU[6].

I believed the ArchLinux is trying to expand its user-base around the
world, so a neutral country name list would be the best for the
benefit of all of us, ArchLinux developers and users. As a Taiwanese
ArchLinux user, I'm really happy to see that user base of ArchLinux is
growing in Taiwan. Some educational institutions provide mirrors site
in Taiwan, Wiki localized in Traditional Chinese in the recent years.
I sincerely hope this issue can be resolved as soon as possible. Let's
keep the issue simple and not flaming it, thanks.

References:

[1] FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=138672
[2] Rails: http://www.koziarski.net/archives/2008/9/24/countries-and-controversies/
[3] Debian: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/04/msg00798.html
[4] Apple: http://www.apple.com/choose-your-country/
[5] IBM: http://www.ibm.com/planetwide/select/selector.html
[6] ICU: http://source.icu-project.org/repos/icu/icu/trunk/source/data/region/en.txt

Best Regards,
Chien-An "Zero" Cho