[tz] Was Azerbaijan the first government to cite tzdb?

[Philip Paeps]

On 2017-11-10 09:57:30 (+0000), Zefram wrote:
>Paul Eggert wrote:
>>Is the March 2016 announcement the first time a government has cited 
>>tzdb,
>
>Watch out for the next milestone in this direction: the tail wagging 
>the dog.  Look what happened to country-code TLDs. [...]
>
>How would this manifest among timezones?  If tzdb is taken as the 
>arbiter of what is a timezone, which it indeed functions as for some 
>purposes, maybe there'll be a desire for each country to have its own 
>(non-link) timezone, as a matter of national pride. [...]
>
>For this to start happening just needs governments to perceive that 
>appearing on computers' lists of timezones is desirable.  The payoff 
>isn't as obvious as the benefit of controlling a TLD, and it all 
>requires a much greater popular awareness of computer timezone handling 
>than has previously been the case.  But the Azerbaijani government 
>citing tzdb shows that we're well along an upward trend of the latter.  
>I think the whole scenario is plausible, for a few years from now.

Take that thought a bit further and ICANN will be selling timezones to 
the highest bidder another decade down the line.

Groan.

Philip

-- 
Philip Paeps
Senior Reality Engineer
Ministry of Information