2008/12/8 Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au>:
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 02:55:34 -0200 From: "Gustavo De Nardin" <gustavodn@gmail.com> Message-ID: <50af0a260812072055x338351c8saadc4b8805261761@mail.gmail.com>
I can't believe this discussion is still going on, or for that matter, ever started.
I don't read this list daily, I replied when I read the rest of the thread.
Aside from the perfectly normal small group of messages that started this Subject header, the rest of this thread started with a quote from one of the messages that was on topic (explaining how the tz rule files work) that included ...
olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov said: | The cases are specified through 2038 (the maximum year associated with a | signed, 32-bit time_t value). After that (through year "max") the rules say | that DST ends the third Sunday of February every year; this is wrong by a | week in some cases but is better than nothing.
to which you responded ...
gustavodn@gmail.com said: | Just a note.. personally I don't think a knowingly wrong rule is "better than | nothing",
Did you actually read what ado said? The "this is wrong" (that is, we expect now to have invalid data) applies to the years 2039 and beyond. What's more, the error is only sometimes, even after 2039, other years (as we understand the rules now) tzdata is going to be correct.
Yes, finally we have a consistent and predictable rule instead of per year decrees. My point was about the previous years, and (obviously not a matter for Brazil anytime soon now) about the practice of making the current year rule be valid for all unknown future years.
But do you seriously believe that Brazil (of all places - perhaps the country in the world that has the hardest possible summer time decisions to make) is going to keep the rules that we believe are true now for the next 20 years, without changing them???
It doesn't matter. The previous decrees were for the current year, they specifically said "from dd/mm/yyyy to DD/MM/YYYY", but the rules were written as valid for the current and future years, so the rules were wrong. The arguments that say "it's better to have the rule valid for future years" are also wrong, as every year the DST changes here brings discussions about dropping the DST entirely (and some states do so on their own decision I believe), so maybe in the future we don't have it at all (sure, very unlikely, but ...). The new decree is for the current and future years, so writing a rule for the current and future years is the right thing now. (Sorry for cutting the rest, but it was a bit longish and besides my point, per above.) I'm OK if the consensus here is to make per-year decrees valid for the future as a "guess", and even more so because this shouldn't affect Brazil "anymore" now ;], but the given arguments don't cut it to me, compared to the griefs that behavior actually caused (specially when previous year's rule started too much before current year's decree was stated for people to talk about DST and remember it should be fixed before causing problems). -- (nil)