On Thu, 7 Oct 2021 at 16:29, Clive D.W. Feather <clive@davros.org> wrote:
I don't see the word "deprecated" anywhere in the theory file. Who is saying that IDs should be deprecated and what do they mean by that term?
When an ID is deprecated, the project is sending a message that users should not use that ID and should use something else instead. The concept of backwards compatibility is different - it simply keeps whatever IDs we have, without assigning any additional semantic meaning. This matters because recent events indicate that some IDs like Europe/Oslo or Atlantic/Reykjavik are viewed by some list members as being deprecated by tzdb. ie. that downstream users are only using tzdb correctly if they use the region IDs like Europe/Berlin or Africa/Abidjan. The distinction here may seem subtle at first glance, but it is very real. As an application developer I want to be relying on the fully supported public API of the underlying project, not the deprecated parts (even if there is no intention to remove them). I want to squash the negativity around IDs like Europe/Oslo or Atlantic/Reykjavik and have them fully embraced as part of the main supported API of tzdb. Stephen