On 2 April 2013 16:26, Bennett Todd <bet@rahul.net> wrote:

I betcha there are some thermostats that might get bit, and possibly some medical appliances too.

Or industrial control.

The applications of computers with the most horrific downside risk are, inexplicably, not renowned for the best design expertise at controlling against surprises.

I should sincerely hope that any application capable of receiving tz patches is equally capable of receiving patches that help it handle changes in tz.

On 2 April 2013 17:06, John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu> wrote:

I think that is extremely unlikely, but setting a policy that
prohibits our reconsidering an error, if it is clear we have made one,
would be a mistake.

I'd be OK with an advisory commitment though.

Agreed. Nobody can claim to know all possible use cases that are out there, but we seem to agree that the abbreviations aren't meant to be used by computers anyway. In light of that, it seems quite unlikely that a change to the abbreviations would cause problems (especially if announced well in advance), but we have to allow for the slim chance that it might.

--
Tim Parenti