On 10/4/18 7:33 AM, Michael Douglass wrote:
> Opaque ids are what some consumers have been asking for for some time
> because of the political implications of the names.

I would rather not change the zone names currently used in tzdb source
files, as the change would be a hassle for both maintainers and users,
and the existing names simplify maintenance since they are easier to
read than opaque IDs would be.

Although we could add an auxiliary table that maps existing names to
short, stable, and reasonably opaque identifiers, CLDR is already
maintaining such a table and it'd be confusing if we attempted to
duplicate that work; plus, such a table would not be useful to tzcode so
it wouldn't be tested well by us. For now, we are probably better off
improving the already-existing suggestion to use CLDR facilities for
consumers worried about politics. Proposed patch attached.