[tz] PD notices
Paul Eggert
eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Wed Sep 25 20:25:29 UTC 2013
On 09/25/13 10:02, Zefram wrote:
> Can we come up with some consistent formatting rules to make the PD
> notices machine readable?
The intent has always been that the database is public-domain, with
the exception of a few source files that are derived from BSD and
therefore have a BSD license. So the consistent formatting rule can
be "assume PD unless there's a copyright notice". You can look
for copyright notices by searching for "Copyright (c)".
I'd rather not add an explicit public-domain notice to each file, as
that'd be clutter, and it'd mean our copy of leap-seconds.list would
have to differ from the NIST original.
I'll push the following patch to try to make this clearer, along
with cleaning up some of the old cruft in README.
>From ca267f2db18c922c239fce1e570717950a29749d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 13:16:49 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] doc: document public-domain status of files, and streamline
README
* Makefile (COMMON): Move README here ...
(DOCS): ... from here, as it talks about the public-domain status
of the files, and this should be in both tarballs.
* README: Add intro. Mention public-domain status of files.
Remove and reorganize some obsolete text, e.g., move 1989 release
info from here to NEWS's tail.
* NEWS: Document the above.
---
Makefile | 4 ++--
NEWS | 43 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
README | 53 ++++++++++++-----------------------------------------
3 files changed, 57 insertions(+), 43 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 4576092..edcee14 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -311,8 +311,8 @@ NEWUCBSRCS= date.c strftime.c
SOURCES= $(HEADERS) $(LIBSRCS) $(NONLIBSRCS) $(NEWUCBSRCS) tzselect.ksh
MANS= newctime.3 newstrftime.3 newtzset.3 time2posix.3 \
tzfile.5 tzselect.8 zic.8 zdump.8
-COMMON= Makefile
-DOCS= NEWS README Theory $(MANS) date.1
+COMMON= Makefile README
+DOCS= NEWS Theory $(MANS) date.1
PRIMARY_YDATA= africa antarctica asia australasia \
europe northamerica southamerica
YDATA= $(PRIMARY_YDATA) pacificnew etcetera backward
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index b56498b..ca64829 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,6 +1,16 @@
News for the tz database
+Unreleased, experimental changes
+
+ Changes affecting documentation and commentary
+
+ The README file is now part of the data tarball as well as the code.
+ It now states that files are public domain unless otherwise specified.
+ Its details about the 1989 release moved to a place of honor near
+ the end of NEWS.
+
+
Release 2013f - 2013-09-24 23:37:36 -0700
Changes affecting near-future time stamps
@@ -2103,6 +2113,37 @@ Release 92 - 1992-04-25 18:17:03 -0000
By popular demand (well, at any rate, following a request by kre at munnari)
+The 1989 update of the time zone package featured:
+
+ * POSIXization (including interpretation of POSIX-style TZ environment
+ variables, provided by Guy Harris),
+ * ANSIfication (including versions of "mktime" and "difftime"),
+ * SVIDulation (an "altzone" variable)
+ * MACHination (the "gtime" function)
+ * corrections to some time zone data (including corrections to the rules
+ for Great Britain and New Zealand)
+ * reference data from the United States Naval Observatory for folks who
+ want to do additional time zones
+ * and the 1989 data for Saudi Arabia.
+
+ (Since this code will be treated as "part of the implementation" in some
+ places and as "part of the application" in others, there's no good way to
+ name functions, such as timegm, that are not part of the proposed ANSI C
+ standard; such functions have kept their old, underscore-free names in this
+ update.)
+
+ And the "dysize" function has disappeared; it was present to allow
+ compilation of the "date" command on old BSD systems, and a version of "date"
+ is now provided in the package. The "date" command is not created when you
+ "make all" since it may lack options provided by the version distributed with
+ your operating system, or may not interact with the system in the same way
+ the native version does.
+
+ Since POSIX frowns on correct leap second handling, the default behavior of
+ the "zic" command (in the absence of a "-L" option) has been changed to omit
+ leap second information from its output files.
+
+
-----
Notes
@@ -2124,3 +2165,5 @@ the release (if all else fails; these are marked with a timezone of
Earlier versions of the code and data were not announced on the tz
list and are not summarized here.
+
+This file is in the public domain.
diff --git a/README b/README
index 091384c..25d7433 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,40 +1,18 @@
README for the tz distribution
-This file is in the public domain, so clarified as of
-2009-05-17 by Arthur David Olson.
-
"What time is it?" -- Richard Deacon as The King
"Any time you want it to be." -- Frank Baxter as The Scientist
(from the Bell System film "About Time")
-The 1989 update of the time zone package featured
-
-* POSIXization (including interpretation of POSIX-style TZ environment
- variables, provided by Guy Harris),
-* ANSIfication (including versions of "mktime" and "difftime"),
-* SVIDulation (an "altzone" variable)
-* MACHination (the "gtime" function)
-* corrections to some time zone data (including corrections to the rules
- for Great Britain and New Zealand)
-* reference data from the United States Naval Observatory for folks who
- want to do additional time zones
-* and the 1989 data for Saudi Arabia.
-
-(Since this code will be treated as "part of the implementation" in some places
-and as "part of the application" in others, there's no good way to name
-functions, such as timegm, that are not part of the proposed ANSI C standard;
-such functions have kept their old, underscore-free names in this update.)
+The Time Zone Database (often called tz or zoneinfo) contains code and
+data that represent the history of local time for many representative
+locations around the globe. It is updated periodically to reflect
+changes made by political bodies to time zone boundaries, UTC offsets,
+and daylight-saving rules.
-And the "dysize" function has disappeared; it was present to allow compilation
-of the "date" command on old BSD systems, and a version of "date" is now
-provided in the package. The "date" command is not created when you "make all"
-since it may lack options provided by the version distributed with your
-operating system, or may not interact with the system in the same way the
-native version does.
-
-Since POSIX frowns on correct leap second handling, the default behavior of
-the "zic" command (in the absence of a "-L" option) has been changed to omit
-leap second information from its output files.
+Unless otherwise specified, all files in the tz code and data are in
+the public domain, so clarified as of 2009-05-17 by Arthur David Olson.
+The few exceptions are code derived from BSD and use the BSD license.
Here is a recipe for acquiring, building, installing, and testing the
tz distribution on a GNU/Linux or similar host.
@@ -53,8 +31,6 @@ substituting your desired installation directory for "$HOME/tzdir":
make TOPDIR=$HOME/tzdir install
$HOME/tzdir/etc/zdump -v America/Los_Angeles
-To use the new functions, use a "-ltz" option when compiling or linking.
-
Historical local time information has been included here to:
* provide a compendium of data about the history of civil time
@@ -71,7 +47,7 @@ The information in the time zone data files is by no means authoritative;
the files currently do not even attempt to cover all time stamps before
1970, and there are undoubtedly errors even for time stamps since 1970.
If you know that the rules are different from those in a file, by all means
-feel free to change file (and please send the changed version to
+feel free to change a file (and please send the changed version to
tz at iana.org for use in the future). Europeans take note!
Thanks to these Timezone Caballeros who've made major contributions to the
@@ -79,15 +55,10 @@ time conversion package: Keith Bostic; Bob Devine; Paul Eggert; Robert Elz;
Guy Harris; Mark Horton; John Mackin; and Bradley White. Thanks also to
Michael Bloom, Art Neilson, Stephen Prince, John Sovereign, and Frank Wales
for testing work, and to Gwillim Law for checking local mean time data.
+Thanks in particular to Arthur David Olson, the project's founder and first
+maintainer, to whom the timezone community owes the greatest debt of all.
None of them are responsible for remaining errors.
-Look in <ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/releases/>
-for updated versions of these files.
+Look in <ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/releases/> for updated versions of these files.
Please send comments or information to tz at iana.org.
-
-Postscript: The README above is largely unmodified (aside from details
-of mailing list and ftp archive addresses) from that prepared many years
-ago by Arthur David Olson, to whom the timezone community owes the
-greatest debt of all. Arthur is not currently maintaining this data or
-code (though he remains involved).
--
1.8.3.1
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