[tz] [PATCH] Replace some zones with links when that doesn't lose useful info.

[Paul Eggert]

Marc Lehmann wrote:
> why have these standards changed so drastically w.r.t. tzdata?

The standards haven't changed.  Nor are the proposed changes "drastic"; 
they're merely nibbling around some rarely-explored edges (once the 
problems already pointed out have been fixed).  What *has* changed is my 
understanding of how spurious the old Shanks-based data entries are. 
They're really bad.  I can't prove it, but I have the strong impression 
that most of the entries that we haven't already checked were simply 
invented.  If I'd known how bad they were I would not have put them 
there in the first place.

> most people seem to have been concerned about stability of timestamps. not
> about accuracy, correctness or regression testing.

I doubt whether there's a genuine lack of concern about accuracy or 
correctness.  On the contrary, I think we all want the data to be as 
accurate and correct as it can be.  The only dispute here is how much 
stability trumps these other concerns.