Fellow Debian Developers and Debian Installer contributors, Please find below a letter sent to the ISO-3166 MA (Maintenance Agency) about the issue of the name of the Taiwan country. This letter has been written after some exchanges I had with Martin Michlmayr and has got Martin approval. I tried to give it a kind of "official" status by writing it under my name and trying to make my best for it to appear representing the current concerns which have lead to lot of debates recently.
The intent is for sure not solving the issue but rather trying to have some official position from ISO-3166 MA. The most critic point is mentioning that though ISO claim they use some UN references for choosing the controversial name and despite my best efforts for finding these references, they are completely invisible. ----- Forwarded message from Christian Perrier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 18:18:45 +0200 From: Christian Perrier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The official ISO-3166 name for TW Dear Sir or Madam, This mail is written on behalf of the Debian project, an association of volunteers from all around the world working jointly on a freely available computer operating system, known as Debian GNU/Linux (see http://www.debian.org for more information). Debian is highly committed to Open Standards and has always used existing standards for its needs. This is why the team in charge of the design of the Debian GNU/Linux installation software has decided to use the ISO-3166 standard as a reference for the list of world countries. Like other computer operating systems, Debian GNU/Linux needs to prompt its users about the country they live in in order to make several technical settings according to this country. This is why the official English and French versions of the ISO-3166 list are used in Debian. Other languages currently supported by Debian (38 at the time of this writing) use non-official translations for the country names. Recently, the users from Taiwan have raised a concern about their own country name in Debian. They are very upset by the use of the official ISO-3166 name, "Taiwan, province of China". After some research and reading the ISO-3166 FAQ, we have found that the entry for TW in ISO-3166 currently uses this highly controversial name in reference to some United Nations publications, namely: * United Nations Terminology Bulletin Country Names or * Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use of the UN Statistics Division as stated on http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/10faq/frequently-asked-questions.html#QS03. The United nations bulletin "Country Names" seems very hard to find online. The only reference we have found until now is an unofficial copy at http://www.cicred.ined.fr/acerd/pays_a.html for the UN Bulletin nr. 342 from Jan 19th 1991. This copy of the UN Bulletin, dated 1991, lists TW as "Taiwan, China". The document, however, does not make it clear whether this comes from the UN publication "Country Names". The "Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use of the UN Statistics Division" is available online at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49alpha.htm. This copy does NOT list Taiwan at all. As a conclusion, Debian contributors and users are currently under the feeling that the ISO-3166 standard is slightly outdated or biased regarding its official sources when it comes to deal with the country usually named "Taiwan" (code TW). Because, this is a high concern for all our users and contributors, we would like to know whether some work is planned by the ISO-3166 experts for dealing with this issue. Knowing that this issue for using a proper name for the country/territory/area designed by the two-letter code TW is probably also a concern for the members of your organisation, we remain, Sincerely yours, Christian Perrier Debian GNU/Linux installation system localisation coordinator on behalf of the Debian GNU/Linux developers and users with agreement of Mr Martin Michlmayr, Debian Project Leader. PS : please mention whether you agree for the reproduction of your answer to public mailing lists. In the case you don't agree, we will send to these lists our conclusions from this answer. -- ----- End forwarded message ----- -- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]