New home for time zone stuff by 2012?

[Mark Peek]

When ado sent out the first email on this thread, my first thought was that 
the Unicode Consortium would be a great place to maintain the timezone data. 
Throughout the resulting discussion I am still a "+1" for it to be maintained 
there. I believe Mark Davis has commented on different levels of release 
flexibility within the Unicode Consortium and I think the dialog has indicated 
that a fast and flexible release time line is what the users of tzdata are 
wanting. I am sure the Unicode Consortium would want to ensure the continued 
success, continuity and single source of tzdata if it was agreed for them to 
take this on.

Still a +1 for Unicode Consortium.

Mark

On 8/30/09 7:00 PM, Robert Masters wrote:
> Mark,
>  
> I do understand the there are a number of descriptive (vs prescriptive) 
> standardization efforts, however very few of them are intended to 
> maintain a constantly changing reality. This is the destinction I was 
> trying to draw. The conventional standardization process either creates 
> a model of a reality, and then enforces that model (with occasional 
> refinements or modifications), or creates a new prescriptive model that 
> is likewise updated on a relatively infrequent basis.
>  
> In both cases, the intent is for the operational reality to follow the 
> standard (even if the standard is originally derived from that 
> operational reality).
>  
> The TZ database is a somewhat different kettle of fish, in that it is 
> more a process of documenting a constantly changing reality. This 
> process is orthoginal to the conventional standardization process - be 
> it descriptive (Unicode Locales) or prescriptive (802.11i) in origin.
>  
> In the case of live documentation, you are constantly attempting to keep 
> up with a changing reality - this requires a greater agility and 
> responsiveness than your typical formal standard. Conversely, and to use 
> your example of the Unicode Locales project, once the standard is 
> documented, it is unlikely that the (for example) date format custom for 
> a particular region will change in the space of a few days. This is the 
> sort of rapid change that is commonplace for the TZ database project.
>  
> Based on this, I feel that placing the TZ database project under the 
> control of a traditional standards body with not be appropriate, due to 
> the very different style of maintenance and thinking required.
>  
> 
> Regards
> 
>  
> 
> Rob Masters
> 
> *Unix Systems Administrator*
> 
>  
> 
> Bunnings Group Limited
> 
> 126 Pilbara Street, Welshpool WA 6106
> 
> Locked Bag 20, Welshpool WA 6986
> 
> Phone: (08) 9365-1507
> 
> E-mail : rmasters at bunnings.com.au <mailto:rmasters at bunnings.com.au>
> 
> Website: www.bunnings.com.au <http://www.bunnings.com.au>
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* mark.edward.davis at gmail.com [mailto:mark.edward.davis at gmail.com] 
> *On Behalf Of *mark at macchiato.com
> *Sent:* Saturday, 29 August 2009 7:38 AM
> *To:* tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
> *Cc:* tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
> *Subject:* Re: New home for time zone stuff by 2012?
> 
> There may be some misunderstanding here. While there are some 
> standardization efforts that are perscriptive, many standardization 
> efforts are targeted at "reflecting reality as closely as possible". The 
> Unicode Locales project, for example, aims at getting translations, date 
> formats, time formats, etc. on the basis of customary usage.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 16:48, Robert Masters <RMasters at bunnings.com.au 
> <mailto:RMasters at bunnings.com.au>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Thank-you Russ!
> 
>     That is exactly the sort of response I was hoping for - why NOT to use
>     my suggestion.
> 
>     Further, your suggestion has a number of very good points to support it.
> 
>     Eyrie.org has been around for a long time by net standards (over 10
>     years now), and has always been well maintained and resourced. They
>     provide the same benefits that Sourceforge offer, with none of the
>     problems that the site currently suffers from. It is independent of a
>     formal body, providing a separation from bureaucratic controls, and is
>     likewise separated from an individual's place of employment.
> 
>     I do not think that moving the project under the umbrella of a standards
>     or similar organistation will be of particular benefit, as the point of
>     the project is to reflect reality as closely as possible, not to try to
>     enforce a standard on reality. In many ways it requires the exact
>     opposite of a standards body.
> 
>     Regards
> 
>     Rob Masters
>     Unix Systems Administrator
> 
>     Bunnings Group Limited
>     126 Pilbara Street, Welshpool WA 6106
>     Locked Bag 20, Welshpool WA 6986
>     Phone: (08) 9365-1507
>     E-mail : rmasters at bunnings.com.au <mailto:rmasters at bunnings.com.au>
>     Website: www.bunnings.com.au <http://www.bunnings.com.au>
> 
> 
>     -----Original Message-----
>     From: Russ Allbery [mailto:rra at stanford.edu <mailto:rra at stanford.edu>]
>     Sent: Friday, 28 August 2009 2:55 AM
>     To: tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov <mailto:tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov>
>     Subject: Re: New home for time zone stuff by 2012?
> 
>     "Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]" <olsona at dc37a.nci.nih.gov
>     <mailto:olsona at dc37a.nci.nih.gov>> writes:
> 
>      > I'll be eligible to start drawing a pension in mid-2012. Since I'm
>      > accustomed to slow-moving Quaker process, that makes it time to get
>      > serious about finding a new home for time zone stuff.
> 
>      > There are several pieces of the puzzle (some of which haven't seen
>      > much work of late):
> 
>      >       Data maintenance
>      >       Data distribution
>      >       Code maintenance
>      >       Code distribution
>      >       Mailing list maintenance
>      >       Mailing list hosting
>      >       Standards work (for example, tweaking POSIX TZ environment
>     variables so Godthab can be represented)
>      >       Code enhancement (for example, year zero work and Julian
>     calendar
>      > work)
> 
>     Since it's been explicitly mentioned as a suggestion, I guess I'll be
>     one to stand up and say that I'd really hate to see this work move to
>     Sourceforge.  The Sourceforge site is riddled with advertising in ways
>     that have gotten increasingly obnoxious over the years, it's slow, it's
>     often buggy, and the mailing lists that it hosts have historically also
>     mangled outgoing messages with even more advertising.
> 
>     In the name of not complaining about something without offering an
>     alternative:
> 
>     Moving from hosting based on the current maintainer to hosting based on
>     another individual may not be the best approach, and I certainly
>     understand if people would prefer something more distributed that makes
>     it easier to have continuity of access.  However, I'm willing to host
>     the infrastructure for continuing to distribute and discuss the timezone
>     database personally, particularly as an alternative to seeing it move to
>     Sourceforge.
> 
>     eyrie.org <http://eyrie.org> is my personal domain, independent of
>     any employment of mine,
>     and can offer:
> 
>     * Mailing list hosting (via Mailman)
>     * Mailing list maintenance (I'm willing to review the moderation queue)
>     * Data distribution via archives.eyrie.org
>     <http://archives.eyrie.org> / ftp.eyrie.org <http://ftp.eyrie.org>
>     * Code distribution via archives.eyrie.org
>     <http://archives.eyrie.org> / ftp.eyrie.org <http://ftp.eyrie.org>
> 
>     If the number of downloads of the source and data is in excess of a few
>     GiB a day of network traffic averaged over a month, hosting the
>     distribution is a bit trickier, but I think it's unlikely that would be
>     the case.  That's over 10,000 downloads of the tarball a day, and I
>     suspect nearly all users get it via distributions or other sources.
> 
>     If whoever is doing the maintenance would like to use a revision control
>     system, I'm happy to host the repository with the caveat that I would
>     like to keep the number of people with access small and restricted to
>     people whose identities I can be reasonably assured about, since I don't
>     have the distributed hosting facilities of a Sourceforge or the like.
>     If the intention is to move to a more open commit model, it would
>     probably be better to explore an option like GitHub, Savannah, or a
>     similar project hosting provider.  If the project would stay with a
>     single committer who just needs a place to upload things, I can
>     certainly provide that.
> 
>     --
>     Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu <mailto:rra at stanford.edu>)
>     <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ <http://www.eyrie.org/%7Eeagle/>>
> 
> 
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