Status of zh-* proposals

[JFC (Jefsey) Morfin]

At 11:47 06/03/2005, Michael Everson wrote:
>Jefsey,
>DON'T write to me privately.

Dear Michael,
I have no problem with my private mail being made public. You only expose 
your manners and document that I politely and usefully warned you on the 
elementary courtesy, diplomacy and respect which are necessary when dealing 
with other people's cultural patrimony.

>At 05:31 +0100 2005-03-06, JFC (Jefsey) Morfin wrote:
>>Dear Michael,
>>I did not want to say this on the public list, but I do not think it is a 
>>good idea for this list and for the IANA to ask James Seng to talk on 
>>behalf of China. Nor to register Microsoft as the Referent of the Chinese 
>>languages in the IANA tables. I even feel both are highly inapropriate.
>
>I am not interested in your extremist views. IANA asks nothing of James 
>Seng. I suggest to Peter and Mark that they bring him in on it because he 
>is an expert in IDN whose opinion we trust.

Your qualification of "my views" helps better understanding why my 
conditional support to the "RFC 3066bis" Draft was called "gerrymandering" 
and that my condition to consider the IDNs needs was qualified as "odious" 
by its authors.

My suggestions (split of the Draft, creation of a dedicated IETF WG for its 
Internet standard related parts, serious analysis of the architectural 
implications of the multilingualization demanded by the ITU and WSIS 
unanimous resolutions for years, involvement of the national Registries, 
consideration of the programing aspects - starting with IDNA) are what the 
authors, the IESG and yourself are now following. A procedural consensus I 
can only applaud.

I know you only consider the linguistic aspect of the IBM's and Microsoft's 
Chinese language registration requests. But a IANA registration is a 
technical issue which affects all the programs going to use it, and by 
consequence all the users of that programs (protocols, browsers, word 
processors, grammatical correctors, optical readers, typesetters, spell 
checkers, computer-synthesized speech, braille [RFC 3066], etc. etc.). 
Everyone understand the tremendous impact they may have on national 
cultures, economies, sovereignties, social cohesions. They should only be 
made by language authorities (I am not the one who decided registrations 
should have a registrant and a documentation of reference -  what is not 
the case in ISO 639, ISO 3166, ISO 15924 which do not meet the resulting 
problems we face).

>>I gave you the list of the ccTLD Managers for the countries IBM and 
>>Microsoft want to be the Referent of the language. I can only repeat my 
>>strong advise that you contact their ccTLD Managers first, as the IESG 
>>registration adviser for the IANA language tag registry. By courtesy and 
>>out of respect for their national sovereignty and for the authority as 
>>the trustee of their local communities.
>
>I have no intention of fulfilling my role in any way other than it is 
>specified in the RFC.

I am sorry, but RFC 3066 refers to the ietf-languages at iana.org mailing 
list. As the header of this mail shows it, there is not such a list, but a 
reroute of the ietf-languages at alvestrand.no mailing list where participants 
are to subscribe. This list is not advertised on the IANA site, nor managed 
by the IANA. It therefore has not the exposure required by RFC 3066, nor 
the resulting IANA authority. IMHO here is the real root of our 
disagreement. Let respect RFC 3066.

RFCs are coherent together. Please read RFC 1591 about the NIC being the 
trustee of the Local Internet Community. Please read the RFC 3869 where IAB 
calls on the financial help of Governments for Internet R&D. Also the ICANN 
ICP-1 document and the contract/MoU ICANN proposes to ccTLDs. The Internet 
is the adherence to the Internet standards, our contributions in getting 
everyone concerned involved should help this adherence not to compromise 
its stability.

jfc