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

[David Braverman]

I've been following this debate for a while now.

There is no real harm in leaving LMT and historical time zone entries in place. Removing them is nothing more than an aesthetic decision, but one that will break thousands of applications, confuse users, and cause a public-relations nightmare for our merry band of volunteers.

While I completely understand the theoretical basis for merging pre-1970 time zones, and I completely understand the recurring admonishments from some contributors to the list that software should never expose the Country/City identifiers to users, I disagree with both points. That's not how user-facing software works.

A bedrock principle of usability is that end users will take the easiest path to using software, and if it doesn't work as expected, they get mad. There's a reason software engineers get dinged frequently for not taking "human factors" into account, mainly because we frequently forget that humans use our software. The Country/City identifiers make perfect sense to users and thus to software engineers of average laziness: I mean, why spend time (and money) writing a mapping layer on top of a perfectly understandable UI element? 

And why do we think users won't want to get accurate wall-clock time for times before Unix 0? Astronomy (and astrology) and historical research are just two (three) disciplines that need historical wall-clock time. 

As for politics, Kyiv/Kiev is a triviality compared with the Oslo/Berlin thing. Despite technology purists' disdain for software engineers directly exposing Norway/Oslo to their end users as a time zone option, thousands of applications do just that. Technology purists can also tut-tut all the Norwegian end users who haven't taken the time to read the TZDB Theory file and, as a consequence, don't grasp the solid technical reasons for making Berlin their time zone "capital." But the fact is, Norway has some experience with their government being run from Berlin in living memory, and it's not a happy time in 20th century history. Before you accuse me of a Godwin's Law violation, I assure you this is a real historical fact—i.e., a "human factor"—that will cause real blowback.

The arguments for doing nothing are a lot stronger than the arguments for cleaning up the historical entries. Just leave them alone. If messiness offends one's technical sensibilities, I suggest that software design for people might not be the right career choice.

David Braverman
https://www.nuget.org/packages/InnerDrive.TimeZones/