[tz] How widely used is the tz database?

[Norbert Lindenberg]

Now, David Patte's original question was "how many computer systems currently use the tz database, and potentially suggest the current ambiguous abbreviations to potential users?". At least the volume leaders in tz database use (Android, iOS, Java) don't normally use the abbreviations provided by the tz database - they get long or short display names from CLDR (the Unicode Consortium's Common Locale Data Repository). The numbers discussed here therefore don't have much to do with the relevance of Australian time zone abbreviations in the tz database.

Norbert


On Mar 31, 2013, at 9:59 , Andrew Paprocki wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Guy Harris <guy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> On Mar 31, 2013, at 2:28 AM, Mark Davis ☕ <mark at macchiato.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'd guess almost every modern system except Windows. Including mobile devices, 1B is probably low.
> 
> For starters, every machine running OS X, every iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, every Apple TV, every AirPort Extreme/Express/Time Capsule that's running NetBSD (rather than whatever small OS was used before they switched to NetBSD), and, as far as I know, every machine running Android.
> 
> Then add in servers running Solaris and newer versions of AIX, and PC's running Linux/*BSD/Solaris.
> 
> It is embedded into Java:
> http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tzdata-versions-138805.html
> 
> Which would also cover all of the non-PC Java based hardware devices.