<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="auto">I want to thank tzdb for all the work that has been done providing recent timezone data for those that need this central repository.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I would like to join with others in forking the db so we can start and maintain a new tz db that also becomes a primary db for historical tz data.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Archeologists do not wait until they have every detail perfect and complete about the fossil of a dinosaur before publishing the discovery of a new bone. Historians do not wait until they understand the complete civilization before publishing new evidence of a new society. Historical information can never be complete, but a standard and repository for historical data must be available for the collection of this type of data as a focal point for research in this type of data.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'm in, and can bring 45 years of professional software development experience, including 30 years of C, 25 of c++, and 10 of javascript, and 5 of nodejs.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">David</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">David</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div id="composer_signature" dir="auto"><div style="font-size:85%;color:#575757" dir="auto">Sent from my Galaxy</div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div><br></div><div align="left" dir="auto" style="font-size:100%;color:#000000"><div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Stephen Colebourne via tz <tz@iana.org> </div><div>Date: 2021-09-20 04:07 (GMT-05:00) </div><div>To: Time Zone Mailing List <tz@iana.org> </div><div>Subject: [tz] Preparing to fork tzdb </div><div><br></div></div>Hi all,<br>As most of you probably know, there is a dispute about the tzdb<br>maintainer's recent changes to merge large numbers of time-zones<br>[1][2]. These have the effect of wiping out historic time-zone<br>information on many locations where the data has been in tzdb for many<br>years.<br><br>It appears that there is soon to be a new release of tzdb containing<br>these changes. In my opinion, the correct behaviour of the tzdb<br>maintainer would be to revert the controversial changes before doing a<br>release.<br><br>In the event that the tzdb maintainer does not revert, consideration<br>must be given to forking the project. The purpose of the fork would<br>initially be to maintain the tzdb data set as it was prior to the<br>dispute. This would then be released in parallel to the original tzdb<br>to ensure that downstream projects do not each do their own thing (ie.<br>to minimize incompatibilities downstream).<br><br>Is there support for a fork?<br>Is anyone willing to help out?<br>Is any other group willing to sponsor tzdb (eg. CLDR or Red Hat)?<br><br>Please reply to this thread with an indication of support and/or help.<br><br>thanks<br>Stephen Colebourne<br><br>[1] https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-June/thread.html<br>[2] https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-September/030372.html<br></body></html>