[db-wg] country codes in the RIPE Database (was: ORGANISATION country code)

Hi Leo

On Tue, 7 Mar 2023 at 23:51, Leo Vegoda <leo at vegoda.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I strongly support what George has written.
>
> On Tue, 7 Mar 2023 at 14:29, George Michaelson via db-wg <db-wg at ripe.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > I don't necessarily disagree with you about the risks here, but I
> > suggest that the decision to deprecate or alter behavior with this
> > field is not something which a single RIR should undertake without a
> > wider conversation.
>
> In particular, I support this paragraph.
>
> We need to reach out to people who use this data and get them to tell
> us what they need or want it to mean. Until we hear from them we are
> just guessing.

"what they need or want it to mean"
You said it yourself Leo, if we try to change the perceived meaning of
this data after 20+ years, many people will never get the message. We
cannot 'fix' this particular piece of undefined data...ever!! We can
debate it as long as we want but it changes nothing. As Cynthia said,
she knows for sure "there are major online services that utilize the
country attribute in inetnum objects for GeoIP data". This is despite
the RIPE NCC telling people for over 20 years they cannot reliably do
this. Every time anyone influences the wider geoIP data set with any
data from this attribute, they are potentially corrupting that data
set. There is nothing we can do to change that fact as long as this
indeterminate data exists and is used against official advice.

"We need to reach out to people who use this data"
We have been discussing this issue on this mailing list for months. We
have comments from a handful of people. That is out of tens of
thousands of resource holders, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions,
of consumers of this data. For the majority of people these
discussions are not important. No outreach is likely to create any
mass influx of opinion. That is an unfortunate reality. An informed,
educated guess is often the best we can hope for.

cheers
denis
co-chair DB-WG


>
> Kind regards,
>
> Leo