enh wrote:
Android currently uses zone.tab to get a list of time zones in use in a given country.
Yes, as does tzselect (which is in the tz code). This continues to work with the proposed changes: zone.tab still lists all time zones in use in a given country, and every entry in that list continues to work. Marc Lehmann wrote:
reducing the quality of the tz distribution(s) (which were beyond outstanding) for political reasons
No real reduction in quality is being proposed. There's no significant difference in behavior between the current and proposed data. David Patte wrote:
Using the political consensus of the UN is the standard way of handling such issues.
As we've discovered, that doesn't suffice to prevent major disagreements on this list, disagreements on issues that are not germane to the primary purpose of the tz database. If we froze zone.tab these disagreements would continue to take time and energy away from the project. The goal of the recently proposed changes is to avoid these political minefields in the future, without introducing significant technical problems. So far, no significant technical problems have been been uncovered, though of course that may change as the issue is discussed further.