[governance] Mandatory and non-mandatory governance

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 10:53:04AM +0700,
 Norbert Klein <nhklein at gmx.net> wrote 
 a message of 106 lines which said:

> It is extremely difficult to fund all these things - though they are
> a prerequisite for any "people-centered information society" in many
> countries which do not have the English, or Russian, or Dutch
> language - or any other language in a strong economy - as their
> environment.  Leaving all these problems to be solved locally means
> - for many language/script communities - that they are beyond their
> own economic reach.

Yes, I understand. You argue (and very well) that there should be an
international *action* (otherwise, the market will do nothing or,
worse, will crush the local languages). But it has little to do with
the governance. For instance, it does not require an international
agreement or consensus. Some countries can choose to not spend money
on it but they cannot stop it, the way the US government can stop a
change it does not like in the DNS root.

And your examples (localizing software, creating documentation) are
very good but, each time I heard someone from the UN talking about
multilingualism, it was only to mention the small and not very
important issue of IDN TLDs.

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