[tz] Preparing to fork tzdb

[Guy Harris]

On Sep 21, 2021, at 4:51 PM, dpatte via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:

> Date: 2021-09-21 18:49 (GMT-05:00)
> To: dpatte <dpatte at relativedata.com>
> Cc: Eliot Lear <lear at lear.ch>, "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at davros.org>, tz <tz at iana.org>
> Subject: Re: [tz] Preparing to fork tzdb
> 
>> On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 3:42 PM dpatte <dpatte at relativedata.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> The strategy used since tz was created has caused many political arguments and decisions in this group instead of deferring the decisions to the ISO that has this mandate.
>> 
>> ISO countries doesn't solve some of the thorny political issues,
>> because ISO codes don't take a position on boundary disputes or naming
>> disputes. E.g. Crimea. When the invasion happened, the civil time in
>> the region occupied changed. That means a new zone entry needed to be
>> created. I don't know how defering to ISO resolves the naming of that
>> one.
>> 
>> The other example would be Palestine. Regardless of what ISO decides,
>> the time in Palestine is what it is, and is different from Israel in
>> funny ways, and the territories that have gone back and forth have
>> gone back and forth and thus need new entries.
> 
> Incorrect..
> 
> Iso 3166
> 
> Ramallah is recognized in the State of Palestine.

And Hebron, presumably - it's the city used for West Bank Palestine.

> Sevastopol is recognized as a city as being in Ukraine.

But it's not a city used for a tzdb - Simferopol is.

And Kyiv is also a city in Ukraine, but, as far as I know, it keeps different time from Simferopol, and the tzdb recognizes that.

However, "deferring to ISO" doesn't mean "providing one *and only one* tzdb region per ISO country"; such a policy would not work very well for the three largest countries listed in the northamerica file, for example.

If, indeed, Crimea and the rest of Ukraine do not, in practice, keep the same time, then, hopefully, "deferring to ISO" also wouldn't mean "giving Crimea the same offset and rules as the rest of Ukraine".