[tz] Preparing to fork tzdb

[Guy Harris]

On Sep 22, 2021, at 3:55 PM, dpatte via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:

> I should add that no research scientist expects all historical data to be perfect before publishing. History always gets murkier the further you go back. All historical data is in fact best-guess, published so it can be improved upon 
> 
> We should be providing a forum for this.. 
> 
> See below..
> 
> Sent from my Galaxy
> 
> 
> -------- Original message --------
> From: dpatte <dpatte at relativedata.com>
> Date: 2021-09-22 18:32 (GMT-05:00)
> To: Guy Harris <gharris at sonic.net>
> Cc: Watson Ladd <watson at cloudflare.com>, tz <tz at iana.org>, Eliot Lear <lear at lear.ch>
> Subject: Re: [tz] Preparing to fork tzdb
> 
> I don't believe anyone has suggested that zones should be limited to 'only one zone per country'.

I was trying to guess why the claim that 

> 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.

was deemed "incorrect".  As far as I know, ISO 3166 says nothing about the legality of Russia's annexation of Crimea, and thus says nothing about which country's laws specify the offset and rules for Crimea, nor do they indicate which offset and rules apply, in practice, in Crimea.  The latter is what the tzdb should provide.

> But I believe there should be AT LEAST one zone per iso country, and it was the removal of the Montreal historical data a few years back that got me started.

The removal of the Montreal historical data would not have been affected by any "AT LEAST one zone per iso country" rule; Quebec have not separated from the rest of Canada, so they're not an "iso country".

That rule *would* restore, for example, the pre-1970 history of the Africa/Asmara tzdb region, which is currently in ER, and which was moved to backzone in 2014j.