[tz] [tz-announce] 2021b release of tz code and data available

[Paul Eggert]

On 9/29/21 2:41 AM, Derick Rethans wrote:
>>    However, it omits most proposed changes that merged all Zones
>>    agreeing since 1970, as concerns were raised about doing too many of
>>    these changes at once.

> The problem wasn't that you suggested to do too many changes at once,
> but that you were doing them *at all*.

Other people did express those concerns, which is why I omitted most of 
the proposed changes and documented the omission. Although I wasn't able 
to accommodate the particular concern that you expressed, due to the 
need to demonstrate real progress on the equity issue, what I wrote 
attempted to be a reasonably accurate summary of the concerns in question.


> there should be a seperate one for Europe/Vaduz if any data is 
> different.

Such a policy would entail a significant amount of work and/or the 
addition of a significant amount of wrong data to the database, for 
almost no benefit to users - a benefit that I expect would be exceeded 
by the overall cost to users.


> I understand that for some use cases, people might want the smallest 
> possible binary size.

That's a different goal, one that tzdb could well add an option for. 
Many tzdb use cases, for example, would be accommodated by an 
"alike-since 2020" merge. I mention 2020 since that's 50 years since 
1970, and supporting these sorts of merges every 50 years or so could be 
useful in the long run (assuming this project survives the next 50 days :-).

However, like you I don't think such an option should be the default (at 
least, not until 2070 or so :-).