We really need to add Kosovo to the list of countries, regions,
territories, areas, zones or whatever you want to call it. Right now, in
fact for the last 17 years, not only Kosovo people are suffering from this
problem but everyone having to do with Kosovo, not for political reasons
but for a technical reasons.
All the governments, agencies, institutions have to come up with their own
solution to make up a code like XK, or KV just to overcome ISO's outdated
3166 standard.
Airline companies have this problem bigtime. They are the ones using debian
servers providing booking systems to all kinds of travel agencies.
Adding Kosovo is purely a technical solution because:
- Currency is Euro in Kosovo, Dinar in Serbia, Lek in Albania
- Financial institutions need to make special exceptions and custom
make their software solutions to work in Euro even if current
country code
is Serbia or Albania
- POS systems default to Dinar or LEK having the system do
unnecessary currency to currency conversion causing losses in fractional
calculations in each transaction
- Online ordering systems cause a nuisance to the user because the
user needs to switch Euro all the time or choose another country like
Germany instead which causes conflicts with GeoIP services and TAX
calculation.
- Zip codes, Postal Codes are different
- +383 country code has been assigned by ITU which is different from
Albania and Serbia
- Kosovo by constitution has 3 official languages which the installer
can show choices of all three or more, however Albania and Serbia have one
each.
We really need to understand that ISO 3166 is outdated because each of
those countries that make up the commissioning body of the ISO, have found
their own solutions of dealing with Kosovo country code. In addition they
all have established diplomatic relations and have opened embassies in
Kosovo and they have waited for ISO to include Kosovo because they need to
work, they need to finish their daily tasks, they need to function.
ISO-3166:RS is also outdated and in fact invalid because 1990 President
Milosevic removed the autonomous status of Kosovo which means RS-KM was
valid only until 1990. However, there have been updates to ISO-3166 in
2004, 2007 and 2010 and especially to the RS part of it and RS-KM was never
removed. Then again in 2013 with Brussels Agreement Serbia shutdown
"parallel institutions of the province of Kosovo".
I think Debian should do the same because we have so many people,
companies, institutions, governments and agencies that need to work, do the
daily tasks and function.
By adding Kosovo, we're not removing Serbia or Albania from the list. Users
will still be able to choose Serbia or Albania as they did before.
For those getting upset for political reasons, we're not defining a
political status for Kosovo, because we're not calling it a country. We're
adding Kosovo to the list of countries, territories and regions. A country
may have a political status but territories and regions are purely
geographical terms.
Please fix this bug in Debian.
A JSON list of 2 letter region* codes with ISO-3166 + Kosovo in English is
here. This list will be extended to include more regions, formats,
languages and scripts.
API: http://annsystem.com/api/getCountry.php
Docs: http://www.flossk.org/en/blog/country-list-good-all
Glibc Locale is here:
http://iamalbanian.com/4gnu.html
Thanks,
//Agron
