Countries nomenclature database

Countries nomenclature database

[Pierre Equoy]

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Hello,

I recently discovered the IPFire Location project[1] and I like that there is an open alternative to Maxmind GeoIP database.

I live in Taiwan, and when I connected on the website[1], I was greeted with:

"You are visiting from Taiwan, Province of China"

I am indeed visiting from Taiwan, but Taiwan is not a province of China.

I had a look at the source code[2] but couldn't find the database you are using in order to provide a patch.

Is it possible to modify the wording?

Thanks,


[1] https://location.ipfire.org/
[2] https://git.ipfire.org/?p=location/libloc.git;a=summary

--
Pierre

Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.

Re: Countries nomenclature database

[Michael Tremer]

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Hello Pierre,

Thank you for your email.

> On 21 Aug 2020, at 02:42, Pierre Equoy <pierre.equoy(a)protonmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I recently discovered the IPFire Location project[1] and I like that there is an open alternative to Maxmind GeoIP database.

It is great that you are interested in our little project.

> I live in Taiwan, and when I connected on the website[1], I was greeted with:
> 
> "You are visiting from Taiwan, Province of China"
> 
> I am indeed visiting from Taiwan, but Taiwan is not a province of China.

I am aware of the difficulties around Taiwan.

We addressed this during development of our database and first hoped that we would not have to deal with this problem at all. We are touching political territory and other countries and places in the world are also affected. I am personally not educated enough about all the individual issues and therefore unwilling to make a decision in either way. It will probably in the end come down to where you are, where you are from and what you believe in.

So, we used the country list from a python module called “iso3166” which simply lists all countries known to that ISO standard with the same number. In short: We wanted to outsource it.

We realised very quickly that this won’t really reflect reality.

Therefore we added a list of countries to the database and we added a name to them for those who struggle to remember all the country codes (i.e. me).

So here is the code that is pulling the country name from the python module which is used and shown to you on the website:

  https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire.org.git;a=blob;f=src/backend/countries.py;h=782c3fe1e6738c879074add52389c1624834d7c5;hb=HEAD

We added a text file with the country code, continent code, and country name to the database here:

  https://git.ipfire.org/?p=location/location-database.git;a=blob;f=countries.txt;h=ced8aa9119f795480bab19179ac68227d7e3fe65;hb=HEAD

That way we thought that it is easier to change and would give us more flexibility as well as some consistency wherever libloc is being used. However, our own application does not use that.

Note that Taiwan is simply “Taiwan” here.

So, I will change our web app and have it pull the country name from the database.

I apologise for any trouble this has caused and I thank you very much for highlighting this issue. If there are any others we are currently not aware of, please get in touch.

Best,
-Michael

> I had a look at the source code[2] but couldn't find the database you are using in order to provide a patch.
> 
> Is it possible to modify the wording?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 
> [1] https://location.ipfire.org/
> [2] https://git.ipfire.org/?p=location/libloc.git;a=summary
> 
> --
> Pierre
> 
> Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.
> 
> 

Re: Countries nomenclature database

[Michael Tremer]

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Hello Pierre,

I have made the changes and I rolled them out:

  https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire.org.git;a=commitdiff;h=e929ed926c54bd10e9387755b66add47795e6e50

Could you please check for me if you are seeing the correct country name now?

Best,
-Michael

> On 21 Aug 2020, at 10:25, Michael Tremer <michael.tremer(a)ipfire.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello Pierre,
> 
> Thank you for your email.
> 
>> On 21 Aug 2020, at 02:42, Pierre Equoy <pierre.equoy(a)protonmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I recently discovered the IPFire Location project[1] and I like that there is an open alternative to Maxmind GeoIP database.
> 
> It is great that you are interested in our little project.
> 
>> I live in Taiwan, and when I connected on the website[1], I was greeted with:
>> 
>> "You are visiting from Taiwan, Province of China"
>> 
>> I am indeed visiting from Taiwan, but Taiwan is not a province of China.
> 
> I am aware of the difficulties around Taiwan.
> 
> We addressed this during development of our database and first hoped that we would not have to deal with this problem at all. We are touching political territory and other countries and places in the world are also affected. I am personally not educated enough about all the individual issues and therefore unwilling to make a decision in either way. It will probably in the end come down to where you are, where you are from and what you believe in.
> 
> So, we used the country list from a python module called “iso3166” which simply lists all countries known to that ISO standard with the same number. In short: We wanted to outsource it.
> 
> We realised very quickly that this won’t really reflect reality.
> 
> Therefore we added a list of countries to the database and we added a name to them for those who struggle to remember all the country codes (i.e. me).
> 
> So here is the code that is pulling the country name from the python module which is used and shown to you on the website:
> 
>  https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire.org.git;a=blob;f=src/backend/countries.py;h=782c3fe1e6738c879074add52389c1624834d7c5;hb=HEAD
> 
> We added a text file with the country code, continent code, and country name to the database here:
> 
>  https://git.ipfire.org/?p=location/location-database.git;a=blob;f=countries.txt;h=ced8aa9119f795480bab19179ac68227d7e3fe65;hb=HEAD
> 
> That way we thought that it is easier to change and would give us more flexibility as well as some consistency wherever libloc is being used. However, our own application does not use that.
> 
> Note that Taiwan is simply “Taiwan” here.
> 
> So, I will change our web app and have it pull the country name from the database.
> 
> I apologise for any trouble this has caused and I thank you very much for highlighting this issue. If there are any others we are currently not aware of, please get in touch.
> 
> Best,
> -Michael
> 
>> I had a look at the source code[2] but couldn't find the database you are using in order to provide a patch.
>> 
>> Is it possible to modify the wording?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> 
>> [1] https://location.ipfire.org/
>> [2] https://git.ipfire.org/?p=location/libloc.git;a=summary
>> 
>> --
>> Pierre
>> 
>> Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.
>> 
>> 
> 

Re: Countries nomenclature database

[Pierre Equoy]

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‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Friday, August 21, 2020 5:39 PM, Michael Tremer <michael.tremer(a)ipfire.org> wrote:

> Hello Pierre,
>
> I have made the changes and I rolled them out:
>
> https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire.org.git;a=commitdiff;h=e929ed926c54bd10e9387755b66add47795e6e50
>
> Could you please check for me if you are seeing the correct country name now?

I checked and it now shows "Taiwan", as expected.

Thank you very much for the fast feedback and changes, and for explaining how things worked under the hood.

All the best,

Pierre