[tz] Some thoughts about the way forward

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Paul Eggert via tz said:
> It's clearly not equitable. We should not make special exceptions for 
> Norway and Sweden while having China, southeast Asia, Africa, etc. 
> follow the same rules as everyone else. There is no timekeeping 
> justification for this; it's purely a political decision and it's a 
> terrible look for us.

Who is pushing you to do this urgently? Because I don't see anyone on the
list doing so.

Earlier this year I had to go through an "appropriate language" change to a
3200 page document which was *not* just replacing "master" and "slave" with
new (and in my opinion better) terms. It was a big exercise and nobody
expected it to happen in a week.

Without prejudice to the meaning of "equitable" in this context (though I'd
like to see a definition in TZDB terms), provided that there is a clear
programme to get the database into an equitable form, any reasonable person
will accept that it's not trivial and may take some time to complete,
particularly because we don't know the effects of these changes on our
downstream users.

I am going to add myself to those who are saying that 2021b should be 2021a
plus the Samoa changes *only*. Bring your present top of tree to be the
draft 2021c and let's all talk about where we go after the weekend.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather          | If you lie to the compiler,
Email: clive at davros.org     | it will get its revenge.
Web: http://www.davros.org  |   - Henry Spencer
Mobile: +44 7973 377646