Wrong Country Name. (Taiwan)

[BlueT - Matthew Lien - 練喆明]

The Official Country Name of Taiwan is "Taiwan, Republic of China", NOT "Taiwan, Province of China".
This is an important Bug, please kindly fix this ASAP. Thanx.

Ref: Taiwan Government Website http://www.taiwan.gov.tw/mp.asp?mp=1001

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

The LoCo Directory imports data from /usr/share/xml/iso-codes/iso_3166.xml (in the iso-codes package). Please get it fixed there.

[BlueT - Matthew Lien - 練喆明 (bluet)]

ISO-3166 made it wrong for a long time.
Do we have to do the long process of trying to get the official ISO document update, just bcoz we wanna LoCo.ubuntu.com have the correct name of our Country?

[BlueT - Matthew Lien - 練喆明 (bluet)]

Ubuntu-TW held at least 3 country-wide activities an year, and we're the biggest staff-source of "COSCUP"[1] for years, which is going to be held at 8/14~15 with "GNOME.Asia Summit"[2] Co-Host with us this year, with over a thousand people over the world attend.

Many Well-Known OpenSource guys are planning to come, including Mark Shuttleworth, who came to Taiwan for Business (OEM) and Community purpose for over 5 times. Because they know here, Taiwan, Republic of China, is an important Country for promoting Ubuntu and OpenSource.

As you can guess, it would be a Big Joke if they found loco.ubuntu.com has the totally wrong Country Name of Taiwan, got notified, bug-reported, and got no way to correct it.

"Ubuntu Training Partner"[3] page had the same bug (which came from ISO-3166) before. It got corrected when they know they made it wrong. Now the new version of that page use only "Taiwan" to avoid the problem.

And Yes, of course we want ISO-3166 to get updated at the same time, but I don't know how.
I'd be really glad if anybody can help about this.
But before that, could anybody help on the wrong information provided on LoCo.ubuntu.com?

The bug-more ISO-3166 brought many problem in the history, including D-I (Debian Installer)[4], Starbucks[5], NASA[6] and even CIA[7] had the same problem, but they all get their information corrected.
As in DFSG #5, ("5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups"), people in Taiwan should have the neccessary respect from Ubuntu, too.

As ISO is not an Independent and Politic-Free Organization, it doesn't represent the real status of the truth, though many people follow it.
Why should you insist to follow a document when you know it's wrong/buggy?

Wikipedia also has the page for Taiwan, ROC [7].

If you need any more informations, please let us know. Thanx really much.

Ref:
[1] http://coscup.org/
[2] http://gnome.asia/
[3] http://webapps.ubuntu.com/partners/training/
[4] http://wiki.debian.org.tw/index.php/InstallationSystemDiscussion
[5] http://news.starbucks.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=227
[6] http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3163/2946398109_1a3a8f77e1.jpg
[7] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tw.html
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

I really don't want to have to special-case countries.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

I very much respect the work that you are doing as a team and I don't discriminate anybody anywhere. Please don't insinuate otherwise.

The situation I don't want to get into is very simple: one team wants their country name changed, the next team thinks their name is inaccurate, somebody else thinks the name that was changed is wrong, etc. etc.

I take the list of iso-codes as is. If a country name is wrong it should be changed in the iso-codes package, preferrably in Debian, so it's immediately fixed in Debian, then in Ubuntu, then in the LoCo Directory.

[BlueT - Matthew Lien - 練喆明 (bluet)]

I know the situation is hard for you on this.
But what will you do if you know you're leaving the truth away? Keep working on the dark-side, close your eyes and pretend everything's just fine?

iso-codes doesn't have bug, because it just follow the ISO documents.
The bug is in ISO-3166, and you know, we almost cannot correct it.
The other bug is, loco.ubuntu.com website decide to follow ISO-3166 With No Exceptions. (If you really do.)
ISO is not the God and ISO-3166 is not the Rule of the World or Law anyway.

Canonical knows how to do, and they did it.
The world wide Ubuntu Community knows how to do, and they did it, too.
Then why the loco.ubuntu.com website/project Refuse to accept that?

We love OpenSource and Ubuntu, hoping to make it better and better for all Human-Beings in the world.
But if LoCo.ubuntu.com has a dead-head, we might have to leave all these passions behind...

This is NOT a special case, but a well-known bug. (You can check those Refs in my previous comment.)
Hope and Thanks for your understanding, Daniel.

[Yao Wei (medicalwei)]

If OK, please use the common name of TW.

The below is what I have found in the iso_3166.xml

<iso_3166_entry alpha_2_code="TW" alpha_3_code="TWN" numeric_code="158" common_name="Taiwan" name="Taiwan, Province of China" official_name="Taiwan, Province of China"/>

[Yao Wei (medicalwei)]

AFAIK, there are 2 country codes has its common name in iso_3166.xml

The one is the problematic Taiwan, the other is Venezuela.

So, to solve the problem, could it use common name instead when common name exists?

[Yao Wei (medicalwei)]

Part of iso-codes package is taken fron the ISO 3166, so the fix should be in its upstream: ISO or UN.

[Mosky Liu (mosky)]

Taiwan is not a part of Province of China now. It is beyond doubt truth. "Taiwan, Province of China" is a politically sensitive name what we are averse. I really want to see the name of us country is "Taiwan, Republic of China". But I don't want to be a trouble maker here. Maybe using the common name of the ISO 3166 is apposite to us.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

I'll investigate. Thanks for all the comments so far.

[Yao Wei (medicalwei)]

The patch to the solution I provided is attached here. We will appreciated if you help us make the change.

Note: I didn't check if the patch works correctly.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Thanks a lot for the patch, it'll be a good basis for whatever solution we come up with in the end. I'll make sure it works OK and that existing entries in the database are correctly dealt with.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Merged into trunk. Will be part of 0.2.15 release.

[Michael Hall (mhall119)]

As loco directory developers, our focus is on making loco.ubuntu.com the best community resource we can make it. However, we're not experts in all fields, especially international politics, and so we often have to rely on existing "authorities" like ISO 3166 to provide information for us. There was never any intention to slight or disregard Taiwan, Venezuela or any other country, it was simply a matter of using what was available to us. We are hesitant to introduce special cases, or contradict what we get from such "authorities", because we usually don't have the qualifications to make better decisions than those "authorities". As such, our use of the ISO 3166 names was made from humility, not arrogance.

That said, I'm very glad we now have a solution that both utilizes the information available to us in the ISO names, and allows us to present a more accurate and acceptable set of country names. We will always strive to make the loco directory better, and far from having a "dead-head", we will always work to correct bugs and inaccuracies in it when they are brought to our attention. But please remember they we are currently still a very small group and, as far as I know, we are all just human (worse still, software developers), so please take that into consideration when filing bugs and leaving comments.

[Yao Wei (medicalwei)]

Thank you all.

We are looking forward to put our LoCoTeam into “Taiwan” in the directory.

[BlueT - Matthew Lien - 練喆明 (bluet)]

Thanks for all the wonderful things you did for the world. :-)
Expecting the 0.2.15 release.

Best wishes,
BlueT

[Michael Hall (mhall119)]

Ming, if you are currently using "Taiwan, Province of China", you won't have to many any changes, the database entry itself will be renamed to simply "Taiwan".