conf/138672: ISO 3166 call Taiwan a wrong name, please call Taiwan "Taiwan" as before.

[Hung-Te Lin (piaip)]

The following reply was made to PR conf/138672; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: "Hung-Te Lin (piaip)" <hungte at gmail.com>
To: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org, linpct at gmail.com
Cc:  
Subject: Re: conf/138672: ISO 3166 call Taiwan a wrong name, please call 
	Taiwan "Taiwan" as before.
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:16:06 +0800

 "FreeBSD does not and will not be involved with world politics! "
 I totally agree with this - but I think using ISO3166 is not a proper way
 when it comes to "country names".
 
 As the previous reply said, ISO3166 should be only used for the country cod=
 e,
 not the names - it's just a memo from the Maintenance Agency=E2=80=8E to
 identify the country,
 not a standard of country names.
 
 In fact, even IBM is not suggesting to use the names from ISO3166
 http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/writing/references.jsp
 I believe the country names listed there are supposed to help people
 select their own
 country; in this way, a common (or usual) name used by most software
 is more prefered
 than a non-official memo field
 
 Let's look at PR 68226 again: it's a request trying to change some
 country's name,
 by the name of ISO3166. However the FreeBSD commiter apparently knows the
 reporter's intention, so he replied "I think that's no the technical
 problem, it's the politics problem."
 
 Also look at PR 68495 http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=3D68495
 The FreeBSD maintainers again declared to keep the name.
 
 In order to prevent getting involed with politics, I suggest following
 the strategy of 68226
 and 68495 to keep the names instead of using ISO3166.
 
 Just like PR68495 said, "The FreeBSD installation only wants to know
 where you approximately live",
 so the names listed there should be a neutral geographic term instead
 of political Nationality names -
 which we should remove the terms like "Province of XXX".
 
 I also found some articles discussing ISO3166 in open source world:
 http://yllan.org/blog/archives/296
 "I don=E2=80=99t think it=E2=80=99s a clever way to ease a controversial is=
 sue by
 replacing a neutral term
  with political term just because the political term come with a so
 called =E2=80=9Cstandard=E2=80=9D for OTHER thing."
 "A standard isn=E2=80=99t necessary to be political correct in all contexts=
 .
 eg. you may insult many people
  by simply adopt the definition of some terms in Webster 2nd ed. There
 is no reason you should
  blindly follow a standard if you know that=E2=80=99s problematic. There is=
  no
 reason you just blame the
  questioners barking up the wrong tree without correct the error in
 your product."