On 19/10/2011 12:41 PM, Todd Glassey wrote:
Damn I am Dyslexic... what I was trying to say is that we are not the originators of this information - the jurisdictional metrological lab or the jurisdiction holder is. We need to put in place processes which compliment their dissemination models and which do not open us to liability. Notice in the OLSON Suit Astrolabe is suing OLSON and not NIH. They will lose since the project is protected under the 11th Amendment Rights there of NIH, since it and not OLSON holds responsibility for the publishing.
But isn't the mere existence of the OlsenDB prove that this just doesn't work? Seeing how improvised and last minute many of these changes are, some of these jurisdictions clearly don't understand the implication these changes have on the IT infrastructure of their constituents. If they don't care for their constituents, why do you think they would care more about a 3rd party? More importantly I think you misjudge the incentives and motivations in the matter. That's important since it is what drives the efforts put in regard to time keeping. It is the IT industry which, to keep their service behaving properly and avoiding bugs and angry customers, needs an accurate representation of the timezone information. It's therefore natural that it's the IT industry that will be willing to put the efforts needed towards gathering that information simply because they have the incentive to do it. As far as politicians are concerned, they just need to say "Make It So" and it will happen. That won't drive many of them into action. While it would be nice that governments properly inform us of their plans, we would be lucky if we got just a simple majority to comply. Yet we need complete information in the matter. Such mechanisms would likely always be incomplete and need to be complemented by 3rd party information gathering.