[tz] [PROPOSED] Merge timezones that are alike since 1970

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Sat May 29 00:02:28 UTC 2021


On 5/28/21 1:44 PM, Stephen Colebourne via tz wrote:
> For example, Norway's and Sweden's time zone history is being wiped
> out in favour of that of Germany. Can no-one here see the political
> sensitivity in that?

In hindsight it was a political decision to create entries for Norway 
and Sweden and thus elevate them above other regions that lack entries. 
So, yes, I can see political sensitivity in removing that elevation.

Here's another way to put it. Why should we maintain Norway and Sweden's 
time zone histories, when we don't maintain the histories for Guangdong, 
KwaZulu-Natal, Thanh Hóa, or Uttar Pradesh? Aside from politics, these 
regions are similar: although all the regions have distinct timestamp 
histories with data that I can cite, all the regions can be merged into 
other tzdb regions (Norway into Berlin, Guangdong into Shanghai, etc.) 
if we consistently limit tzdb's scope to regions that differ after 1970. 
Given all that, why should Norway and Sweden continue to be special?

These are not particularly-obscure examples, as Guangdong etc. all have 
more people than Norway or Sweden do. It would be political to continue 
to focus on Norway and Sweden while excluding Guangdong etc. purely for 
reasons unrelated to timekeeping.

> This code:
>   DateTimeZone zone = DateTimeZone.forID("Europe/Stockholm");
>   System.out.println(zone);
> will print "Europe/Berlin" if this change is not reverted. I consider
> this to be catastrophic.

Even in 2021a, Joda-Time already does that sort of thing for 
Asia/Istanbul, Asia/Kuwait, Europe/Bratislava, Europe/Vatican, etc. 
Whatever techniques people use for these longstanding links should also 
work for the new links.


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