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

Stephen Colebourne scolebourne at joda.org
Fri Jul 11 22:40:49 UTC 2014


The charge is that this is "changes from one set of (likely bogus)
data to another set of (likely bogus) data ".

Simply because you think it hasn't caused issues does not make it so.
Those of us who listen to this list are the consumers and customers of
this data, and our feedback should inform on the desirability of
change. Yet every other person who has responded to this thread has
questioned this change and indicated they would prefer it not to
occur. What has to happen to make it stop?

No one has an issue with changing data to make it better. Everyone has
an issue with changing data from possibly bogus to possibly bogus.
Standard maxim - if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Stephen



On 11 July 2014 19:51, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
> On 07/11/2014 07:19 AM, Marc Lehmann wrote:
>>
>> Never before did I hear that changes from one set of (likely bogus) data
>> to another set of (likely bogus) data is ok because it doesn't cause
>> "signficant disruption".
>
>
> Even if you didn't hear about it, we have done changes like that in the
> past, and we did not encounter problems in the field because the changes
> were done reasonably conservatively, just as the current set of changes will
> be done reasonably conservatively once things are ironed out.  I appreciate
> having more eyes to check over the changes these days to make sure that
> significant disruptions will not ensue, and so far we've gotten useful
> reports from Alan Barrett, Tim Parenti, and David Patte along these lines,
> which will improve the quality of the database.
>
> We do make mistakes, and generate a release that does cause significant
> disruption.  The most recent example of this was the disruption caused by
> the 2014c release, which broke GNOME's Glib. Testing to avoid significant
> disruption to end users should focus on those sorts of issues; in contrast,
> there's no real need to worry about minor adjustments to the placeholder UT
> offset of Upper Volta in 1911.



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