Kevin Kenny via tz <tz@iana.org> writes:
I could live with this. My chief concerns are (a) we should not arbitrarily make data that are believed to be reliable more difficult to access; (b) we should not surprise users by suddenly making them see different names for their home time zones. (For a Norwegian suddenly to have 'Berlin' instead of 'Oslo' appear is not acceptable.) Could we establish the rule, "don't abolish zones once released, even if they are subsequently discovered to be duplicative"?
I think that rule already exists --- the problem is that instead of removing zone names altogether, we're willing to make them misleading by linking them to data for some nearby location (for possibly large values of "nearby"). It's that practice that needs to go, in one way or another. regards, tom lane