[tz] Reason for removal of several TZ

[Michael Douglass]

This issue always surfaces at one point or another. I and others have 
argued for a long time that timezone ids should be opaque.

It's really up to some localization feature to provide meaningful names 
for those timezones. The data for those localization already exists - 
providing region/city names for timezones has just led people to believe 
they mean more than they do.

I'd suggest a first step would be to provide a unique - reasonably short 
- opaque id for each definition. That allows us to build out a 
localization framework around it.


On 12/4/17 13:09, Brian Inglis wrote:
> On 2017-12-04 07:05, David Patte ₯ wrote:
>> On 2017-12-04 02:52, Paul Eggert wrote:
>>> Although we cannot avoid politics entirely, we should strive to avoid as much
>>> as possible in tzdb. For example, tzdb should not take any position on Israel
>>> vs Palestine, North Korea vs South Korea, or Canada vs the United States. It's
>>> not our job to address such disputes and it would be a waste of our limited
>>> resources if the disputes got in the way of our job.
>> Its convenient to frame Palestine in this manner, but if you truly wish to
>> remove your own politics from the db, the politics of the Palestinians
>> themselves should be the deciding factor here.
> I wouldn't mind if the country codes were eliminated from zone.tab to avoid
> politics - it does not serve much function - make that another UI issue to argue
> with each distro or vendor!
> Until then we should go as usual with the de facto majority situation on the
> ground to avoid political claims.
> Unfortunately politicians seem to be allowed to decide which time zones should
> be observed where and when - the source of many of our problems: "Put not your
> trust in princes" although princesses may be more apposite ;^>
> I would prefer bureaucratic inertia to changes over political whims.
>