proposed time zone package changes (Argentina, Mauritius, Niue, Syria)

[derick at php.net]

On Wed, 8 Oct 2008, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] wrote:
> >> Why is there a rule for Oct 2008* if there is nothing officially known?
> > 
> > The rule reflects the sense that Argentina is likelier than not to observe
> > DST, even though nothing is officially known. As indicated in the proposed
> > change letter, there'll be a further update if Argentina does something
> > different than what's now in the Rules.
> 
> So basically the current tzdata has a *guess* at when it *might* be.
> 
> As you probably know, many operating systems had their time wrong last week
> because tzdata said DST would start on the 5th. Ubuntu took days to update
> the tzdata since the report. The current package says it will start on the
> 19th.
> 
> If the government doesn't say *anything* about DST, what will you do? Change
> the rules on the 18th to remove the DST? Do you know how much time it will
> take for all distros to have it? Definitely more than a day, so on the 19th
> we'll have the same mess again.

I would have to agree with that - it would be better *not* to have the 
rule for switching to DST in 2008 in there at all to prevent confusion 
when people update to the new 2008h and their clocks switch incorrectly 
on the 19th. 

regards,
Derick

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