Of course, any change causes problems. However, they can minimize the problems if -- at a minimum -- they adopt a permanent, public policy that:
a) Once established, a country code will never be reused to designate a different country. b) If a country code is changed, the old code will remain as an alias, permanently. That way, even if they continue the policy of changing names at whim, without regard for the consequences of their actions and the worldwide dependencies on stable country codes, at least old data is never invalidated. Mark (The same goes for language codes, of course.) ————— Γνῶθι σαυτόν — Θαλῆς [For transliteration, see http://oss.software.ibm.com/cgi-bin/icu/tr] http://www.macchiato.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Cowan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Michael Everson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 11:21 Subject: Re: ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move > Michael Everson scripsit: > > From the 3166 MA: > > ===== > > New alpha-3 code element for Romania > > > > At the request of the Romanian Government the ISO 3166/MA decided to > > change the ISO 3166-1 three-letter (alpha-3) code element for Romania > > from ROM to ROU. > > > > The change took effect on 1 February 2002. > > ===== > > As I understand it, this request is more of a command. The only > fully stable codes in 3166 are the numeric ones. > > -- > John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There > are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language > that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. > --_The Hobbit_ > _______________________________________________ > Ietf-languages mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages >