[tz] Dropping iso3166.tab

[Andy Heninger]

I favor retaining the region codes, which are useful, and eliminating the
endless discussions by following ISO 3166 exactly, no deviations, no
discussion.




On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 9:38 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> On 05/21/13 09:18, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
> > by this argument you might have merged the entry for Venezuela with other
> > South American entries a few years ago -- but then the administration
> > there decided to do something different.
>
> I think this would still work without user problems.
> Suppose in 2000 we had merged America/Caracas, America/Aruba,
> America/Curacao, and America/Port_of_Spain.  These
> zones would have continued to work as before, because there
> would be 'backward' entries.  Then, in 2007, when Venezuela
> decided to move its clocks, we would have split
> the America/Caracas zone into two regions,
> America/Caracas and (say) America/Curacao,
> and all the old names would still continue to work.
> Splitting zones is a normal part of time zone
> maintenance, and this sort of thing should be routine.
>
> It's true that keeping these zones distinct
> insulates users from plausible future political changes --
> but the downside is that there are zillions of plausible
> future political changes, and once we get into the
> business of guessing which changes are plausible enough to
> deserve a separate entry in the tz database, we are getting
> into the business of politics, which is an area we're
> better off avoiding.
>
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