[tz] Preparing to fork tzdb

Robert Elz kre at munnari.OZ.AU
Thu Sep 23 15:09:32 UTC 2021


    Date:        Thu, 23 Sep 2021 13:19:15 +0100
    From:        "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at davros.org>
    Message-ID:  <YUxwwy90bZHzrtrU at davros.org>

  | Do we know who the authorities are?

No, but we don't need to in advance - when someone demonstrates that
some authority is changing the time in some region, that shows the
existence of such an authority.

  | (1) I don't know who the authorities in the USA are.

Nor do I, but someone does.   Probably many someones.  My believe from
what I have seen (mostly here) though is that the states don't get to make
decisions themselves, but can make requests.

  | (2) The EU is the authority for the transition rules throughout the EU, but
  | doesn't select what zone a country is in. That's a national matter.

Yes, that's what I understood too, and so each country should have at
least one zone.   It doesn't matter if (for example) San Marino has never
had times different from Rome (even if that goes back hundreds of years).
(I also have no idea if San Marino is an EU member, I'm just guessing.)

  | (3) Does Eucla have an authority? Or was it just a few people in the pub
  | that decided to change the clocks and everyone else went along with it?

That is the authority.   No-one ever said it needs a legislative basis,
just that it decides what the clocks should be set to, and that actually
takes effect.    How (or where) they decided to split the difference
between SA and WA times I have no idea (though it does make sense).

  | (Does Eucla have a pub? Surely it does - it's in Oz.)

I would assume so, but I have never been there.  I know it isn't very big
though.

  | And you've missed my point, which is that people (e.g. the Welsh) don't
  | accept 3166 as the authoritative list of countries for domain names,

No, I didn't miss that, I understood what you were saying, my point was
that, IMO anyway, the answer to that is irrelevant to time zones.  What
is and what is not a country is irrelevant - which is why the exact
status of Palestine doesn't matter to us, it has its own time zone, with
its own rules, and someone is deciding what they should be.  That is enough.

Similarly, in AU, it is the states that decide on timezones, summer time
rules, etc, not the commonwealth govt - each state is an authority.

And to answer a point that Paul made in response to a much earlier message
of mine (a few days ago, so hundreds of messages back...) the authorities
that matter are those that exist now (and into the future) - that is, those
who can decide, now, to alter what the time is.   What various towns might
have done a couple of hundred years ago is only relevant if they're still
doing that today.   So Eucla counts, Sacramento doesn't.

kre



More information about the tz mailing list