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agencies, institutions have to come up with their own solution to make up a code like XK, or KV just to overcome ISO's outdated 3166 standard.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We really need to understand that ISO 3166 is outdated because each of those countries that make up the commissioning body of the ISO, have found their own solutions of dealing with Kosovo country code.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ISO-3166:RS is also outdated and in fact invalid because 1990 President Milosevic removed the autonomous status of Kosovo which means RS-KM was valid only until 1990.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.
Glibc Locale is here:
Thanks,
//Agron