On Monday, January 3 2005, "Paul Eggert" wrote to "Mark Davis, Tz (tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov)" saying:
"Mark Davis" <mark.davis@jtcsv.com> writes:
I'm inclined to recommend that we maintain stability as of a given date; that we never change an ID after that point.
1. Would there be any downside to such a policy?
Only if somebody builds the database without the "backwards" file, which lists the backwards-compatibility names. The default is to include "backwards", as it includes very common IDs like US/Pacific. I'd be surprised (but not astonished) if someone omitted it.
I wonder if it would be a good idea to separate the old-style names (US/Eastern, etc.) from compatibility versions of old Area/Location names. It seems like FreeBSD and similar systems would in general want to have the latter even if not the former. -- Jonathan Lennox lennox at cs dot columbia dot edu