[tz] Unacceptable recent changes [wasRe: [PATCH 2/4] Move obsolescent Americas entries to 'backward'.]

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 28 August 2013 18:40, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
> On 08/28/13 09:55, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
>> the database de facto defines what time was around the world
>> pre-1970
>
> It absolutely does not do that.  For the vast majority of pre-1970
> history, the tz database's time stamps are simply incorrect.
> Any attempt to pass the tz database off as the definition of time
> before 1970 should be unacceptable to anybody who cares about
> the facts.

The point I'm making is that end-users of this data assume it to be
stable and reliable. Moreover, the vast majority of those users do not
care whether the data pre-1970 is accurate or not. Stable yes,
accurate no.

What your changes do is change the pre-1970 times for places to be the
pre-1970 times of some other location entirely. How can you not see
that is unreasonable?

I'll say it again, the pre-1970 is used by many users globally. Taking
it from something which may or may not be accurate (the LMT is usually
accurate) to somewhere elses pre-1970 times (definitely inaccurate,
especially the LMT) is nonsense.

I say this on behalf of a very large number of people who just use the
data and don't ever think about it. Your changes are going to severely
damage that data, and that is absolutely unacceptable.

To be honest, I'm really surprised that you're attempting to make
these changes. Destruction of data is a huge no-no to me.

Stability, stability, stability.

Stephen