[tz] Preparing to fork tzdb

[Derick Rethans]

On 20 September 2021 19:27:27 BST, Paul Eggert via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:
>On 9/20/21 11:03 AM, Stephen Colebourne via tz wrote:
>
>> I also believe that discriminating against countries like Angola and
>> Niger is unacceptable. But the solution to that is the same as it
>> always has been - to include full data for each ISO country, using
>> best efforts for data that is not certain.
>
>I addressed this issue toward the end of my recent email to Tom Lane 
><https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-September/030422.html>, which I 
>sent about the same time you sent your email.
>
>
>> The *only* good faith move you can make right now is to revert the
>> patch.
>
>We disagree on this point. This morning I made a different good-faith 
>move, by installing the "Revert May patch to zone.tab" patch into the 
>development database. I suggested another potential good-faith move in 
>that recent email to Tom Lane.
>
>I continue to think that it would be better to work together to find a 
>common solution, than to insist on one unalterable position.

I'm with Stephen here. I don't think that unless the offending patch is reversed there can be an agreeable way forward. We can then take it from there. 

> > The approach you argue for arbitrarily discriminates too, saying that
> > Germany is more important than Norway or Sweden.
>
>The guideline is not arbitrary; it chooses the most-populous city, in 
>this case Berlin. Although every guideline has a bias of some sort, it 
>would be a quite a stretch to say that this particular guideline has 
>racial, ethnic or national bias, which is the concern here.

You might not see that, but developers and users in Norway or Sweden definitely will see this as being a snipe. 

Stephen tried many months ago to come up with a set of statements and suggestions to come up with a reasonable policy on what to do, and although there were some issues with that, there was at least an attempt to codify a way forwards. These suggestions have been met by silence from the coordinator. 

I've also not seen any response to the formal complains that were sent to IANA.

I don't like the idea of a fork, mostly because it serves nobody to have two competing versions of tzdb, but right now I can't see another way out... 

cheers 
Derick