On Jul 15, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Jon Skeet <skeet@pobox.com> wrote:

If the tzdata isn't really intended to be consumed - if we should really only consume the zic output, and anything else is somewhat questionable, then why distribute the tzdata at all? Why not just distribute the zic output files?

For the same reason that people distribute source files and not compiled binaries.

paul