Andre Engels wrote:
I have before proposed to go with ISO 639-2. Main rule for ISO 639-2 is that there should be 50 different documents divided over at most 50 places. I would not put it as a hard rule, but I'd say that for languages outside ISO 639-2, the onus is with the person wanting to add it to give reasons, while for languages within, the onus is with those who want to refrain from adding it.
Klingon is everybody's favorite example of "we shouldn't have this", but it's got an ISO 639-2 code: tlh, officially added earlier this year.
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/codechanges.html
Aside from the "it would be embarrassing" factor which seems to be the main driver in anti-Klingon sentiment, the copyright status of Klingon-language materials is somewhat unclear, as Paramount apparently claims them as derivative works. (IANAL! Feist v. Rural may not apply as creating a language is pretty clearly a creative work, and the Lojban/Loglan case doesn't apply since that was over the trademark to the name 'loglan' -- the lojban folks preemptively changed the entire vocabulary to avoid potential copyright claims.)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)