[tz] Preparing to fork tzdb

[Paul Eggert]

On 9/24/21 11:53 AM, Robert Elz via tz wrote:
> there's nothing
> stopping us treating this as a somewhat special case (which it clearly is)

It's not that special (unless by "special" you mean "temporarily 
commanded by a Red Army general" :-). If you're concerned about pre-1970 
timestamps Europe/Paris is wrong for most of France, America/New_York is 
wrong for most of the US Eastern time zone, etc., etc.

I doubt whether it'd be possible even in theory to hash that all out, if 
one wanted accurate timestamps back to the introduction of standard 
time. Too many of the old records have been lost. But even if it were 
possible, it'd be a lot of work and nobody has the time and inclination 
to do it. We need guidelines that we can realistically follow and that 
result in an equitable database.