[tz] [PROPOSED] Merge timezones that are alike since 1970

[John Hawkinson]

I am sorry to be blunt and overbearing on this particular narrow point:

Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote on Sat, 29 May 2021
at 19:29:28 EDT in <234d77ef-69c4-0c7c-322d-afb88dfed3ad at cs.ucla.edu>:

> On 5/29/21 1:09 PM, John Hawkinson wrote:
> > There is a big difference between (1) "MERGING zones across modern countries" and (2) allowing to persist "zones [that] have crossed national boundaries for decades."
> 
> It's a big difference only to those closely following the history of tzdb.
> It's not a big difference to users.

One can quibble about the magnitude of the difference, but there is no serious argument that the two are the same.

When you, Paul, make logical arguments that equate different issues like this, and use that logical argument to make strong claims and base decisions on those claims, it is a problem. We have to trust that logical arguments stand on their own, without subjective evaluation, and to distinguish the unimpeachable logical arguments made from the subjective ones.

Here, you masqueraded a subjective argument as logical one, and that's why I thought it was worth calling it out, both in my original message as well as here in the reply. Yes, we're in the weeds. But again, yes: words matter, details matter, language matters, and precision matters. Your statement was not correct, because you had blurred two different concepts.

And, of course, this is especially important for you, Paul, because as the maintainer, you need a certain degree of neutrality and more importantly credibility. And credibility is damaged by this style of argumentation.

I am tempted to reply to both your other comments (still quoted below) as well as whether it is "a big difference to users" (unsupported, conclusory, and I suspect not in fact true) but I will save that for another message, integrated with further comments from others in this thread, if at all. I'm trying to keep this hyper-focused on the one issue, because I think it is an important one with a reasonable probability of recurring if it's not addressed.

Thanks.

--
jhawk at alum.mit.edu
John Hawkinson


> The current patch was not prompted by purism. It was prompted by a complaint
> from a user who made a good point about the politics of tzdb 2021a, which
> can reasonably be interpreted to favor countries like Norway etc. over
> countries like Kosovo etc. Rejecting this kind of complaint and saying
> "we've always done it that way" is not a promising path forward.
> 
> tzdb has had zones crossing international borders for decades, and it's been
> fine. We moved politically-motivated links to 'backward' starting eight
> years ago, and that worked fine. We moved politically-motivated zones to
> 'backzone' starting seven years ago and tzdb has rolled along just fine
> since then too. This is one patch in a long line, and as far as I can see
> it'll work out fine too.