[tz] WSJ follows AP to Kyiv

[Paul.Koning at dell.com]

> On Nov 19, 2019, at 3:31 PM, Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
> 
> 
> [EXTERNAL EMAIL] 
> 
> * John Hawkinson:
> 
>> What would we say if diplomats in the US State Department reached
>> out privately to Paul and asked him to accellerate the change and
>> made an argument that doing so was to promote Ukrainian sovereignty
>> and that was a preeminent national security interest of the United
>> States?
> 
> Should the U.S. government really be the arbiter of how the citizens
> of Kyiv call themselves?

That isn't the question.  The TZ names are by convention derived from the English language designations for the place names in question.  This is why we have a zone named Europe/Rome and not Europe/Roma, or Europe/Moscow rather than Europe/Москва́.

Then again, for the hypothetical question about the State Department, my inclination would be to say that this isn't relevant either.  While the TZ database operates in the English language, and a number of its contributors are based in the USA, it is not an activity of the US government nor affiliated with it nor controlled by it.  And more importantly, the database doesn't operate on political considerations, that is VERY clear from the theory file.  If it were to change to do so, all hell would break loose -- we already have way too many people pushing changes for political reasons but fortunately at the moment we can dismiss those.

	paul