[tz] Preparing to fork tzdb

[Tom Lane]

Paul Eggert via tz <tz at iana.org> writes:
> On 9/20/21 1:06 AM, Stephen Colebourne via tz wrote:
>>> These have the effect of wiping out historic time-zone
>>> information on many locations where the data has been in tzdb for many
>>> years.

> None of the information has been "wiped out". It has merely moved from 
> one source file to another, and builds with PACKRATDATA=backzone still 
> install all the info in question. This disagreement is not about "wiping 
> out" info; it's about what category the info falls into.

The concern I'm having is that according to experiments I did back
in June, the above is not true.  As far as I can tell, adding
PACKRATDATA=backzone does *not* reproduce what was formerly the
default set of zones.

I'm all for improving equity in tzdb's coverage, but I think it
should be done by adding coverage for underserved areas, not
removing data from areas that had been well-covered.  And let's
make no mistake: removing data from the default build is removing
data, for many downstream users who won't have an opportunity
to make their own decisions about what their platforms provide.

			regards, tom lane