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

[David Patte]

Why should tz take on all the political fights itself and have to fight 
over Tibet, Gaza, Kosovo, Hong Kong? Its a waste of time. Are you really 
a better judge of world standards, sensitivities and world diplomacy 
than the ISO? Of course not.

Punt this to the organization that is charged with this issue. Let 
people aregue with them. They are not perfect, but it is their job. Why 
force everyone downstream to have to make all those political decisions 
again when 98% will end up using ISO anyway?

(1) To make tz far more useful to far more users, there should be a 
separate zone for each ISO country and at least the largest city in that 
country, ie: Canada/Toronto. Then every defined zone should have 
historical data as far back as possible. Splitting starting at some 
particular date (1970) is a good way of limiting the db size and 
relative accuracy. It then satisfies the need of far more people, more 
easily, without having to be processed downstream.

Or (2) remove all politics, and country names, and go to only 
code-numbered zones, with the local name of the largest city in that 
zone, and let your downstream users add their politics themselves - most 
of which will split them into countries as was suggested in (1), most 
using standrized politics anyway by starting with ISO. It will make tz 
simpler, smaller, and less useful - but at least all the arguments here 
will be gone as well.

But the way it is right now, even before this current suggestion, tz is 
half useful to many users, and tainted with its own political 
insensitivities. Remove all those sensitivities, or use a standard, 
making the DB more useful.


On 2021-05-29 20:59, Paul Eggert via tz wrote:

> I haven't seen any realistic proposal to change this.