On Mon, 2023-04-24 at 19:59 -0400, Tim Parenti via tz wrote:
On Fri, 21 Apr 2023 at 16:23, Doug Ewell via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
The question is whether a new set of 26 identifiers should be created in the tz database which look like aliases for the existing “Etc/GMT±n” identifiers, but which in fact have the opposite meaning.
I have to agree with Paul Eggert that this would add nothing but confusion.
FWIW, I'd pondered making a similar proposal a few years back, and similarly concluded that it's not worth the added confusion for many of the reasons already stated.
At least not unless/until the backward-compatibility concerns leading to the existing Etc/GMT* zones will have (someday) outstayed their welcome, and even then we'd want to wait a good while before adding anything similar.
Thanks for all the feedback - especially the history lesson about GMT vs. UTC. As result I will just clarify the difference between GMT and UTC offsets in the Debian/Ubuntu package. -- Benjamin Drung Debian & Ubuntu Developer