[tz] Uruguay out of DST

[Paul Eggert]

On 07/10/2015 09:15 AM, Deborah Goldsmith wrote:
> is there any reason to wait once the data is verified?

"Verified" is not Boolean.  Have we verified the upcoming Uruguay 
change?  Not really, not nearly as much as (say) we verified the 
most-recent US change -- and even if we had better confirmation, the 
Uruguayan change is controversial and perhaps they'll change their 
minds.  Have we verified the upcoming Moldova change?  More than 
Uruguay, but even there the start date for that change is sheer 
guesswork on my part.  So it's quite possible that the proposed Moldovan 
and Uruguayan changes are wrong, at least in part.

Also, there's overhead to making a release.  Even when data can be 
99.999% verified there is still benefit to having ten releases a year 
instead of fifty, if ten will do.

Downstream users of the tz database need to be reasonably prompt in 
applying new releases anyway.  Governments sometimes decide changes only 
a few days before they take effect, so if users care about timestamps, 
OS release schedules simply cannot require three-month delays.  This is 
true regardless of whether we issue a new Uruguayan-related tz release 
this week or next week.