On 9/22/21 11:06 AM, Stephen Colebourne via tz wrote:
Paul, as duly endorsed TZ Coordinator, are you willing to accept the proposed action to allow time and space to come up with a proper solution?
Unfortunately, the equity issue has broadened and is now visible outside our little community, and I really and sincerely doubt whether it'd be a good idea for us to do nothing about it now. We need to establish that we are fixing the problem and are not deferring action to a never-never land of arcane bureaucracy, and we need to do so in terms that will be clear to outsiders. So, instead of the 2021a1-vs-2021b compromise I suggested earlier (which turns out to have important compatibility issues just with the name "2021a1"!) I now plan to compromise along the lines I suggested a dozen hours ago, here: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-September/030686.html I.e., the idea is to revert most (but not all) of the objected-to changes. In particular, this will revert the changes to Europe/Oslo and Europe/Stockholm, which have drawn the most objections. The idea is to take the first step now, and to take more steps in future releases (which should not be distant-future releases, as we need to continue to make and exhibit a good-faith effort to fix the problem). This will let us generate just one version, 2021b. Although your followup <https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-September/030689.html> didn't agree with the proposed compromise, it didn't reject it in quite the strong terms that I saw in earlier emails. And indeed, the proposed compromise is far closer to what you suggested than to what I suggested, as it replaces only 9 Zones with Links instead of 30-odd Zones. So it's a reasonable way forward, even if both of us dislike the compromise. Because this proposal is a reversion, it should be safe even though it's a last-minute change.