FW: Wrong Argentinian DST introduced in version 2008f

Robert Elz kre at munnari.OZ.AU
Mon Oct 6 14:16:15 UTC 2008


    Date:        Mon, 6 Oct 2008 09:31:03 -0400
    From:        "Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]" <olsona at dc37a.nci.nih.gov>
    Message-ID:  <B410D30A78C6404C9DABEA31B54A2813029A0223 at nihcesmlbx10.nih.gov>

  | From: Aurelien Jarno [mailto:aurelien at aurel32.net]=20
  | Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 9:29
  | To: tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
  | Subject: Wrong Argentinian DST introduced in version 2008f
  | 
  | tzdata version 2008f introduced a rule for Argentinian DST based on
  | http://www.worldtimezone.com/dst_news/dst_news_argentina03.html
  | and
  | http://www.impulsobaires.com.ar/nota.php?id=3D57832

Not really.  2008f changed the expected start date based upon those.
Previous version(s) (certainly 2008e, maybe earlier I didn't check) had
the start date from the first Sun in Oct, which is how the legislation
apparently passed last December was explained (back last December.)

  | Unfortunately those links only speak about rumors of a DST change, there
  | is nothing fixed officially, and according to some Argentinian people
  | DST may even not happen this year.

Unfortunately, summer time is one of those things that people argue
about a lot, and last minute changes happen all the time.  Sometimes
there's no choice but to guess at what looks most likely, based upon
all available information, as expecting to get updates distributed, and
installed, everywhere, with just a couple of days (or even weeks) notice
is absurd.

Which is exactly why there's all this trouble in Argentina now, if we
had just had 2008f times, no-one would have noticed anything yesterday.
It is just that 2008f isn't installed in enough places yet (it is only
3 weeks old) to have affected much - many sites are still using older
data from when we believed that the first Sun in Oct was the right rule.

Hence, some systems turned on summer time yesterday.  Others running
either much older tzdata (last year) won't have summer time at all, and
others running 2008f (or today's 2008g) will start it in 2 weeks.

A huge mess.   If there is anyone actually in Argentina reading this,
(Aurelien I don't know where you are, nor Nicolas Alvarez)
could you please contact the appropriate govt office and ask - ASAP.
Get a reference to something official, written - if available via the
web, even better, but even just an authoritative verbal statement would
be better than nothing.

kre




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