[tz] Issues with pre-1970 information in TZDB

[Tom Lane]

Stephen Colebourne via tz <tz at iana.org> writes:
>> But really my question is whether Stephen C. et al would accept such a change. If Europe/Stockholm *becoming a Link and losing pre-1970 history* is an unacceptable change to data stability, what about Africa/Luanda *ceasing to be a Link and gaining pre-1970 history*?

> It is one of the possible solutions that is acceptable to me. The
> question is really "what rule determines whether an ID in the main
> data files does or does not contain pre-1970 data".

That's half of the issue.  The other half is "if a zone does not contain
relevant pre-1970 data, how would end users know that?"  The existing
answer is "there's no way for them to know", which is pretty awful,
especially when we seem to be willing to change the data at the drop
of a hat.

			regards, tom lane