ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move

[Otto Stolz]

Mark Davis had written:
> 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 dif-

>    ferent country.
> b) If a country code is changed, the old code will remain as an alias, per-

>    manently.


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" :-)


Tex Texin wrote:
> The web page says the old code is reserved for 5 years.
> http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/03updates-on-iso-3166/nlv3e-rou.html

This is much more reasonable; 10, or 20, years would be even more so.
But any reservation beyond 50 years or so, would prove infeasable,
sooner or later.

Best wishes,
   Otto Stolz