[tz] Preparing to fork tzdb

[Almaz Mingaleev]

Speaking of Angola: Africa/Luanda was moved to backward in [1].
The commit message says that it's due to "now-abandoned guideline
that every ISO 3166 code should have a zone".
Ethiopia: Africa/Addis_Ababa was moved to backward in [2].
NEWS file in it tells "Some more zones have been turned into
links, when they differed from existing zones only for older
time stamps".
Using repo history only I get the impression that in 2021 you
merge zones because they were merged in 2014. I don't
understand how that process is related to (or improves)
equity, diversity or inclusion issues.
What do I miss here?

> It replaces Zones with Links when Links suffice. That way, Norway etc.
are treated like Angola etc.

The reasons mentioned in commit messages do not apply to Norway.

> The job is done now.

Sorry, I was unclear. What I meant was what is overall goal of
this refactoring. I guess steps are not that important now.

> The recent patches are orthogonal to the Kiev -> Kyiv rename

Yes, they are. But I think it still might raise concern from users.

tl;dr: Sorry, I've started to follow tz mailing list only recently, I don't
know all the historic decisions. But looking to commit messages history
only, I get a weird impression around recent changes.

[1]
https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/2a18a625a0171e5c54249a54179eda3409b1b838#diff-47823b565d4a696e1db5f479faca0aa271899c05d24971730015cb294d0b6446

[2]
https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/6f6f20f0bc739ce3dfd503700b793c5e459e309d

On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 09:52, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> On 9/22/21 2:53 AM, Almaz Mingaleev wrote:
> > What equity, diversity or inclusion issues were in 2021a?
>
> Locations in countries like Norway and Sweden got special treatment by
> being Zones, whereas locations in countries like Angola and Ethiopia
> were only Links.
>
> > How does the patch solve them or make the situation better?
>
> It replaces Zones with Links when Links suffice. That way, Norway etc.
> are treated like Angola etc.
>
> > Is there a roadmap?
>
> The recent patches implement the last part of a long-term process that
> replaced Zones with Links when Links suffice. The process started in
> 2013. I worked gradually; I lacked time to do it all at once.
>
> The job is done now. There's no reason to make further changes like this.
>
> > There were multiple requests about Kiev -> Kyiv rename.
> The recent patches are orthogonal to the Kiev -> Kyiv rename, because
> that city has a unique timezone history since 1970 and so gets a Zone
> under the guidelines, independently of how the Zone is spelled.
>
> > Won't it cause even more requests of that kind?
>
> I doubt whether the change will affect the number of name-change
> requests. The patches did not affect names; they merely changed some
> Zones to Links.
>
> > And the patch
> > can be interpreted as prioritising some time zones over the others.
>
> Only in the sense that the currently-prioritized timezones are those
> that differ since 1970, which is a timekeeping issue that the tzdb
> guidelines say is our priority. This is in contrast to 2021a, where some
> timezones were prioritized for reasons unrelated to timekeeping.
>
> > Sorry if it was already answered, I couldn't find answers to these
> questions
> > in archives.
>
> This stuff is scattered all over the place, unfortunately. It would be
> helpful if I (or someone else) had the time to write it up. I hope this
> email is enough in the meantime.
>
> PS. I apologize for not answering your email earlier, as well as not
> replying to everyone else's email. Unfortunately I'm swamped with email
> now, much of it not tzdb-related. It will take time to consider all the
> suggestions made recently, but because of Samoa we really need to get a
> new release out soon and so will have to make do with what we have,
> somehow.
>
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