On 28 August 2013 18:40, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
On 08/28/13 09:55, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
the database de facto defines what time was around the world pre-1970
It absolutely does not do that. For the vast majority of pre-1970 history, the tz database's time stamps are simply incorrect. Any attempt to pass the tz database off as the definition of time before 1970 should be unacceptable to anybody who cares about the facts.
The point I'm making is that end-users of this data assume it to be stable and reliable. Moreover, the vast majority of those users do not care whether the data pre-1970 is accurate or not. Stable yes, accurate no. What your changes do is change the pre-1970 times for places to be the pre-1970 times of some other location entirely. How can you not see that is unreasonable? I'll say it again, the pre-1970 is used by many users globally. Taking it from something which may or may not be accurate (the LMT is usually accurate) to somewhere elses pre-1970 times (definitely inaccurate, especially the LMT) is nonsense. I say this on behalf of a very large number of people who just use the data and don't ever think about it. Your changes are going to severely damage that data, and that is absolutely unacceptable. To be honest, I'm really surprised that you're attempting to make these changes. Destruction of data is a huge no-no to me. Stability, stability, stability. Stephen