On 12 Aug 2014, at 10:45, Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk> wrote:
We have been trying to get to a point where the historic tz data is stable and acceptable to everyone. …
I don’t think that is an achievable goal. I write that as someone who broke the stability of UK historical data by finding a lot of the old Summer Time Orders and other regulations, work continued and pretty much finished by Joseph Myers. That sort of thing will probably, and should, continue. Some keen youngster in Elbonia will discover the tz data (maybe her Linux box doesn’t follow a short-notice summer time change) and will remember that her grandfather was a senior official in the Elbonian ministry of the interior, and there is a trunk full of his old stuff in her parents’ attic. Before we know it we will have decades of accurate history for Elbonia, traceable to primary sources, but different from the current tz data. That is a Good Thing, beating stability any day. Peter Ilieve