Default timezone

[Dennis L. Mumaugh]

The issue of what time zone to use if the TZ variable is not  set
should  be  thought  out  a  bit  more.  ATT has decided to use a
"default" of GMT if no TZ is set or if it is NULL ( "TZ=" ).

Our reasoning is that in the majority of cases this is  an  error
by  the  system  administrator  in  setting  or  exporting the TZ
variable and it is necessary for someone to notice the error.  As
it  stands most developers/porters set the TZ to their local time
zone (who is it that uses PST?!) and then never notice that their
product has problems.

Using wall clock as default merely  propogates  this  development
problem  and  results  in  products having problems when they are
used in  other  environments.  The  use  of  wall  clock  as  the
"default"  ought  to be a concious choice by a programmer and GMT
ought to be the default whenever a time routine can't decide what
timezone to use.