[Ossm-members] Re: Makedonija vo debian [NEWS]

Marko Simendić che at vidi.sig
Sun Apr 18 07:53:03 UTC 2004


Lokot na gubec, ?????? ?????, i sve bu v redu kak v Beču..

> Marko Simendić wrote:
> 
>> The problem is in
>> following the ISO-3166 standard (in iso-codes package) by which every
>> country has a short and a long name (the both names for Macedonia seem to
>> be FYRM). Debian maintainers wish to avoid interfering in politics by
>> following the standard.
> 
> What the Debian maintainers (and few more in the FLOSS world) are failing to
> realize is that the ISO-3166 comes from politics. The ISO-3166 standard
> comes from the UN list of countries. The UN list of countries is influenced
> by lobby groups, politicians, etc. that work hard to succeed in doing what
> they do.

Yes, they surely do. :) However, I am sure that the maintainers are very well
aware of this and that they simply don't care. They don't want to interfere
in politics in any way. Not even with a proper cause. This way they can hide
behind the standards. Those standards reflect the balance of power. Unjust as
they might be, they are here to keep the "big ones" happy. No one cares about
the rest (of us).

> I don't know much about the China/Taiwan issue, and I don't like to compare
> it with the Macedonia/Greece issue.

Herbert Xu wrote in one of his letters that they (Chinese) are better off
without Taiwanese using Debian. And I am pretty sure that naming Taiwan
without emphasising it being part of China would cause Debian to be banned
from China or, at least, to be boycotted by the Chinese. Would similar
situation occur with the Greeks if debian-installer offered Macedonia instead
of FYRM? I hope not...

> The Debian maintainers should, instead of looking into "standards", look
> into international law. The UN charter is a good place to start. People
> could tell a lot of stories, and histories about Macedonia. But the fact is
> that in the Balkans, there is a small country that wants to call it self
> Macedonia. The UN charter grants this (human) right.

Yes, it is your constitutional name, in that way it represents the will of
Macedonian people and should be regarded properly. There is no dispute over
that. However, I believe that there will be no change in country naming, no
matter how many users protested. But don't forget that you can always hack
the iso-codes package, replace the problematic string with an appropriate one
and call the first CD Debian-sarge-mk. ;)

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