[tz] Issues with pre-1970 information in TZDB

[Stephen Colebourne]

On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 22:05, Guy Harris via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:
> On Sep 22, 2021, at 3:52 AM, Stephen Colebourne via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:
>
> > More broadly, different individuals, some representing organizations,
> > have expressed different opinions on what they do or do not want from
> > the tzdb data set. Some would like a full historical record of time
> > zone data, others want stability, many I suspect have absolutely no
> > interest whatsoever in pre-1970 data.
>
> Presumably "stability" here includes "don't convert existing tzdb regions to links merely because they have the same 1970-and-later data" (putting them into the "don't merge" camp);

Yes.

> does it also include "don't split existing tzdb regions due to the discovery that different parts of those regions had different pre-1970 data"?  (Those who want a full historical record of time zone data would presumably want those existing regions split.)

Yes, personally I have no desire to split zones solely because of
pre-1970 data. (The concept of splitting zones to get one per ISO
country is one possible solution to the issue, but not one I am tied
to if a different more acceptable rule can be derived)

The question is really down to which of the post-1970 zones we do have
are entitled to have pre-1970 data.

Stephen