On 2017-11-10 09:57:30 (+0000), Zefram wrote:
Paul Eggert wrote:
Is the March 2016 announcement the first time a government has cited tzdb,
Watch out for the next milestone in this direction: the tail wagging the dog. Look what happened to country-code TLDs. [...]
How would this manifest among timezones? If tzdb is taken as the arbiter of what is a timezone, which it indeed functions as for some purposes, maybe there'll be a desire for each country to have its own (non-link) timezone, as a matter of national pride. [...]
For this to start happening just needs governments to perceive that appearing on computers' lists of timezones is desirable. The payoff isn't as obvious as the benefit of controlling a TLD, and it all requires a much greater popular awareness of computer timezone handling than has previously been the case. But the Azerbaijani government citing tzdb shows that we're well along an upward trend of the latter. I think the whole scenario is plausible, for a few years from now.
Take that thought a bit further and ICANN will be selling timezones to the highest bidder another decade down the line. Groan. Philip -- Philip Paeps Senior Reality Engineer Ministry of Information