[tz] Some thoughts about the way forward

[Tom Lane]

Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> writes:
> On 9/24/21 7:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> why are you so insistent that the only way to improve fairness
>> is to make the default contents of tzdb strictly worse?

> First, it's not strictly worse. The stuff in 'backzone' is lower 
> quality, and adding lower-quality data is not strictly an improvement. 
> Accuracy and sourcing has been important for the success of tzdb, and we 
> shouldn't lose sight of that by incorporating a bunch of questionable data.

That argument was perhaps true before May.  There is no justification
for calling much of what you moved in May "lower quality".

> Second, supporting unnecessary pre-1970 data is more work for 
> maintainers, repackagers and (most importantly) end users for almost 
> zero benefit. The timestamps in question are unimportant for almost 
> every use of this database.

These arguments might be a reason for removing pre-1970 data altogether.
They are not a reason for simply moving it to another file (and, in
a default build, replacing it with clearly-inferior data that end users
cannot easily tell is wrong).  That does not improve anything.

			regards, tom lane