[tz] Preparing to fork tzdb

[Stephen Colebourne]

On Mon, 20 Sept 2021 at 17:16, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
> On 9/20/21 1:06 AM, Stephen Colebourne via tz wrote:
> > The purpose of the fork would
> > initially be to maintain the tzdb data set as it was prior to the
> > dispute.
>
> Such a fork would arbitrarily discriminate against countries like Angola
> and Niger, and in favor of countries like Norway and Sweden.

The approach you argue for arbitrarily discriminates too, saying that
Germany is more important than Norway or Sweden. I would have more
respect for your position if you had also proposed wiping out all
pre-1970 data from tzdb, but the current state of tzdb is not only
offensive but nonsensical.

I also believe that discriminating against countries like Angola and
Niger is unacceptable. But the solution to that is the same as it
always has been - to include full data for each ISO country, using
best efforts for data that is not certain.

> Instead of forking, I suggest that we work together to address the
> technical issues raised by the change.

The *only* good faith move you can make right now is to revert the
patch. I'm quite happy to discuss practical solutions once that is
done. If 2021b is released with the disputed patch then the fork will
occur, and you as TZ coordinator will have directly caused the fork.

> one possible
> path forward would be to add a build-time option along the lines that I
> suggested to Tom Lane in
> <https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-June/030197.html>. This would
> let projects like PostgreSQL generate a tzdata.zi file...

As previously discussed, it is not acceptable to expect all downstream
projects to change their build systems. Especially with zero notice.

Stephen