ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move

[Otto Stolz]

Mark Davis scripsisset:
> 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.


Scripsissem:
> This policy is bound to fail, some day. As countries appear and
> vanish all the time, ISO would run out of usable codes, sooner or

> later. Never say "never", nor "permantent" :-)


Mark Davis scripsit:
 > it is unlikely that we would need over 17576 three-letter codes
 > in the foreseeable future.
 > And if that were the case, it would still be better to exceed the
 > 3-letter limit, or *even* go outside of A-Z for letters, than to
 > gratuitously break old data.

My point was only that "permanent" is much longer than "in the
foreseeable future"; cf. <http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc2550.html> ;-)

Thus, if obsolete codes are permanently reserved, inevitably
- one (very distant) day, there will no "suitable" 3-letter codes left,
- one (more distant) day, there will no 3-letter codes left, at all,
- one (even more distant) day, there will no 4-letter codes left,
- and so forth.
Just look at a historical atlas and try to count the countries that
existed in central Europe, during the last two millenia.

On the other hand, it is really very unlikely that we would need over
17576 three-letter codes, at the same time -- even if we reserve
obsolete codes for several decades.

Best wishes,
   Otto Stolz