Subject: [Ltru] Re-use of a region code for the same purpose [was: Re: ISO 3166-1 newsletter on Serbia and Montenegro]

From: Misha Wolf <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 10:54:57 +0100

[Moving to LTRU]

Hi Doug or anyone else,

Please could you explain the reasoning for this.

Thanks,
Misha

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked]
[mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Doug Ewell
Sent: 27 September 2006 06:43
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: ISO 3166-1 newsletter on Serbia and Montenegro

[...]

We can only deprecate CS this one time.  If ISO 3166/MA 
re-reused it, for a reunified Serbia and Montenegro [...], 
we would have to press a UN M.49 3-digit code element into 
service as a region subtag.  We did that on purpose.

[...]

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From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 09:28:28 -0400

Misha Wolf scripsit:

> Doug Ewell wrote:

Sure.  In general, we object very strongly to reused codes; if "en" means
"English" now, it shouldn't mean "French" at some time in the future.
For languages and scripts, the ISO Registration Authorities guarantee
that level of stability.

Country codes are a different story.  There are only 676 possible,
about 10% are taken up by things that are not countries (like EU for
the European Union), and the Maintenance Agency issues a new code
when a country's name changes substantially.  They have reused codes
in the past, and they will have to in the future, although they have
promised henceforth not to reuse a code for at least 50 years after
its abandonment.

Fortunately, each country is assigned a 3-digit number by the U.N., so
if and when a country code *is* reused, we will ignore that and register
the 3-digit number for it instead.  We don't apply this rule when the
code was abandoned before RFC 1766 was published.

CS is a particularly notorious case: it was assigned to Czechoslovakia
and then abandoned when that country broke up, and then was assigned again
(before the 50-year rule) for Serbia & Montenegro and abandoned a second
time when *that* country broke up.  (We decided reluctantly to accept this
*fait accompli* and register the latter assignment.)  If it's assigned a
third time, presumably only in the latter half of this century, the new
assignment will be ignored, and the U.N. numeric code registered instead.

(My remark "hopefully for the last time" was nothing but an ill-timed jest.)

-- 
John Cowan                                   [email-masked]
        "You need a change: try Canada"  "You need a change: try China"
                --fortune cookies opened by a couple that I know