[tz] Preparing to fork tzdb

[Howard Hinnant]

On Sep 20, 2021, at 12:15 PM, Paul Eggert via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:
> 
> A primary goal of the recent patches was to avoid racial or national preferences that were present in the previous setup.

I applaud the motivation to make these changes.  But is it really ethical to knowingly introduce incorrect information into the default configuration, where previously the information was correct?  Even if said information is “historic” or even “not officially supported”?

You have billions of consumers.  If you ship it, people are using it, even if they represent comparatively small numbers.  If I’m understanding things correctly, a non-zero amount of people previously consuming correct information will silently start consuming incorrect information after upgrading to a new tzdb version — and we’re doing that on purpose.

Howard