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From: P.Kirstein@CS.UCL.AC.UK
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: Re: CS top-level domain and its impact on the UK?
Message-ID: <9008090139.AA00131@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 8 Aug 90 17:40:57 GMT
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I was trying to give a diplomatic answer, with some
simplifications.  As I understand it, and I do not guarantee
the facts since the people who know them here are on vacation,
the facts are similar to those I gave - but Jon is also right.
The ISO 3166 standard was in place, but X.400 was not, when the
name of UK was chosen.  It was not clear to the Joint Network
Team (JNT)  what name would be chosen for their mail, since they cover
Northern Ireland - for which the official name is the United
Kingdom - while Great Britain (GB) excludes Northern Ireland.
For this reason they chose UK.  Some time later (or so I have
been told!), X.400 chose its addressing conventions, and the
official British representatives (and this was at a political level much
above the JNT) agreed that ISO 3166 applied to X.400 mail.   By
then there  was substantial usage of "UK" in the Internet, and
the changing from UK to GB might also be considered to have
political connotations.   It is the clearing up of this
mess which is the subject  of the current discussions.

My intervention was merely to make others aware that this was
not a case of the British "not caring as usual";  both Jon and
we are well aware of the problem, and the difficulties it is
causing all of us.  It is just the mechanisms and timing of
changes which are not agreed yet.