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

[Tom Gundersen]

On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 9:49 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist at 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