New home for time zone stuff by 2012?

[Robert Elz]

I know it isn't actually urgent just yet (given we apparently
still have another 2 years with ado managing things), but despite
all the discussion, and noise, we have still have absolutely zero
volunteers for someone to be the one who will take over from ado
when he eventually decides to step down.

Don't be shy, feel free to suggest yourself for the position...

As I see it, the characteristics that we're looking for are ...

1) someone likely to be able to continue in the position for
   10 years or so (beyond 2012) at least - so that probably puts an
   upper age limit of around 50 or so (today) unless you're planning
   on continuing to do this after retirement

2) someone patient, and not flustered - and who can handle (some)
   abuse without running away or responding - that is, with the
   ability to calmly listen to what people say, and then ignore
   most of it, extracting just the important points.

3) someone who uses the net most of the time, and typically has it
   available 365 days a year (366 in leap years) - so that urgent
   changes can get made without too much delay (the occasional day
   off is OK, and we can arrange a deputy for vacations, but you
   cannot be so busy that you have no time for processing anything.)

Note two things I have deliberately omitted from that list - you don't
really need to know much about timezones, of the tz library functions,
or C coding, or ... there are plenty of people who can, and will,
supply the initial information, and then review that provided by others.
Knowledge can't hurt, but isn't essential.   And second, no mention
of network connectivity, server availability to make the distribution
available, or anything like that - finding the person is the hard part,
once that is done, if it is needed (or becomes needed later) we will
find the server support needed for the mailing list, data distribution, etc,
that stuff is all easy.

If anyone has anything else that should be added to the job description,
feel free...

kre

ps: on umbrella organisations (which we don't really need, and certainly
not right now) one issue to take notice of is ownership of the data
(the collection, rather than individual facts).  I know the IETF would
want to blast ISOC copyright notices on everything (access would still
be free, but everything they do gets copyrighted by them).  I have no
idea what the unicode consortium's position would be, but I wouldn't be
surprised to see something similar.   Currently the data files are all
copyright free, licence free, just available - I'd personally prefer to
keep it that way.