[tz] Belarus is listed in MSK timezone

[Dzmitry Kazimirchyk]

On 04/05/2015 12:32 AM, Paul Eggert wrote:
>
> Here's an example of what these thought processes produced: since 1998
> in the tz database the abbreviation MMT has stood for both "Minsk Mean
> Time" (in use 1924-1930) and "Moscow Mean Time" (1916-1918).  The
> analogy to MSK should be obvious.

Not quite, MMT actually looks like natural abbreviation for both terms 
(produced by taking first letter of each word) unlike MSK which 
following this logic doesn't really look natural for neither of "Minsk 
time", "Moscow time", but is directly transliterated from traditional 
Russian abbreviation for "Moscow time" and is historically associated 
with it. To go further, MSK doesn't seem to be analogous to PST and AST 
examples mentioned earlier since it isn't natural abbreviation like they 
are (but rather an abbreviation used "on the ground" to denote "Moscow 
time" and adopted by TZ database for the exact same purpose), hence the 
logic behind using it for "Minsk time" on this basis doesn't seem to be 
entirely applicable. Natural abbreviation for both terms would be 
something like MST which would be neutral and entirely acceptable to 
denote both of them, but MSK in my opinion is just not something falling 
into that category.

Furthermore, TZ database doesn't seem to store full time zone names 
associated with abbreviations it uses. So I guess the consumers of TZ 
database data are making these associations themselves using some other 
sources available to them. Which with current MSK situation is already 
resulting in certain misconceptions like for example here: 
http://localtimes.info/Europe/Belarus/Minsk/


--
Dzmitry Kazimirchyk