[tz] Regarding new Time Zone and DST for Chile 2016 - Possible corrections on tzdata2016c.tar.gz

[Paul Eggert]

On 04/08/2016 11:42 AM, Carlos Huenchullan wrote:
>
> Link America/Santiago   Chile/Continental
>
> Link Pacific/Easter     Chile/EasterIsland
>

These lines are in the 'backward' file, which I expect is what Solaris 
is using.

>
> Before May 15^th the Time Zone is CLT (UTC -3). If we applied the new 
> rules now, the time zone will be CLST (UTC -3) until May 15^th . The 
> time will be fine, but the timezone is not ok.
>

Although this issue is a close call, we took the approach noted in the 
NEWS file for the recent Chile change: "call the period from 2014-09-07 
through 2016-05-14 daylight saving time instead of standard time, as 
that seems more appropriate now".

When countries go on daylight saving time indefinitely, we prefer to 
call it standard time (as that is what it is, in practice). That is what 
we thought Chile was doing, before 2016c. However, Chile went off DST 
after a year and a half, and when there are shorter periods like that we 
have tended to call it year-long DST.