2006/10/10, GerardM <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>:
The ISO standards are a bit more than just language
standards. They are
absolutely free to use them as is. You are not allowed to represent codes
that you make up that confuse with what is in the standard. For ISO-639 this
is absolutely reasonable given that there are over 7000 codes to start off
with.
Which in my opinion would be a reason to go to our own system rather
than theirs.
So if you refuse to use standards that you can not
change start telling
people in the city how many bunder your father has on his farm. You will
find that many do not have an idea how wide an area that is.
So what? If I and my friends agree on what a bunder is, we can use it.
To the outside world I have to use something else. It's not like
Wikipedia is trying to tell others what language codes to use...
Free is a relative thing. For some things it makes no
sense at all to have
them Free as in you can change it in any which way. The standard
organisations have several ways in which they can be influenced. You can
discuss with them about language issues and, that is what the language
subcommittee of the WMF hopes to do. In the mean time, you have to realise
that the ISO standards are an integral part of how the world wide web works.
When you decide that you will not use these standards, I am afraid your
computer will not be able to communicate with the Internet. Standards are
standards for a reason.
Why that? Giving our languages another URL is not going to make them
suddenly unfindable to half the world.
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels