[tz] Dropping iso3166.tab

[Paul_Koning at Dell.com]

On May 20, 2013, at 6:27 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:

> On 05/20/13 13:59, Garrett Wollman wrote:
>> FreeBSD does this (and always has); you can look at it if you want.
> 
> I have been thinking of proposing to drop iso3166.tab from the
> tz distribution, and to drop all uses of country codes.
> This would help simplify maintenance, as it would mean
> that the database would be unaffected by political
> issues such as whether Kosovo is a country, what country
> Jerusalem is in, what country Taipei is in, etc.  The idea
> is to simplify the database to help us focus on our charter
> (namely, civil time) and to be less distracted by political
> issues that do not affect the clocks.

I can see why this idea is attractive.  I can also see why the proposal is unwelcome.

Perhaps iso3166.tab can be separated out into its own distribution.

If that isn't enough, maybe it can be moved into its own project.  Then the trolls can do battle there with the people who want to keep that file intact, and the timezone data project itself will hopefully be rid of that noise, or at least a fair part of it.

	paul