Paul Eggert via tz <tz@iana.org> writes:
On 9/24/21 9:16 AM, John Hawkinson wrote:
So again, why would we not do this? What interest does it serve to do otherwise?
Unfortunately I haven't had time to answer each individual message.
The brief answer to your question is that it is relatively urgent for us to address the equity issue.
So far this issue has been mostly limited to this mailing list, but it's almost sure to come out in the popular press, as the recent flurry of messages has caused outsiders to pay attention to the issue. (I know this because they're contacting me privately.)
It's certainly unfortunate that we still don't have a satisfactory solution, but it's been clear since May that a large fraction of the mailing list doesn't agree with your solution. Forcing the issue under time pressure is just going to make things worse. More than that, your solution is going to result in an effective fork. Even if there's not an actual competing upstream, the probability that some significant fraction of repackagers will start using backzone is going to create confusion on the ground that's indistinguishable from a fork. You should be worrying more about the headlines that will result from *that*. regards, tom lane