[tz] Some thoughts about the way forward

[Paul Eggert]

On 9/24/21 1:33 AM, Stephen Colebourne via tz wrote:
> There is a big difference between merging the time zones of two
> African or Caribbean countries and merging the time zones of two
> European countries. Whether equitable or not

It's clearly not equitable. We should not make special exceptions for 
Norway and Sweden while having China, southeast Asia, Africa, etc. 
follow the same rules as everyone else. There is no timekeeping 
justification for this; it's purely a political decision and it's a 
terrible look for us.

I've just sent a suggestion that would back off many of the changes 
you're objecting to. I view this as being a big concession on my part, 
because I'll now have to defend making a gradual fix to the equity 
problem. Would that suggestion be acceptable to you? Here it is again, 
if you haven't seen it in the recent blizzard of emails:

> OK, how about if I scale back the current round of link-merging, so that it's on the scale of what we've done in previous releases? I would not at all be happy with such an approach since it would delay the release of an equitable solution, but if this approach will help reach consensus I can prepare a patch along those lines. The idea would be to finish the job in the next few releases. 


I really am trying to find a compromise here (even if it's a compromise 
that nobody likes :-). However, a compromise works only if the other 
side accepts it.