I absolutely disagree with the claim that end-user benefit of pre-1970 data is exceedingly tiny. *pre-1970 time data are extremely important for hundreds of authors and millions of users of astrological software.* Whatever one may think of astrology, it is a fact that at was astrologers like Thomas Shanks and others who collected extensive historical time zone data, pre- and post-1970. TZ database would not be what it is without contributions and ongoing effort by the "astrological community". I fully support Thomas Finch's proposal:
I think the way to fix this is to revert both policy changes, and revert all the timezone merges.
On 29.09.21 18:53, Paul Eggert via tz wrote:
On 9/29/21 4:20 AM, Tony Finch via tz wrote:
The aim of merging timezones was to avoid political issues and to reduce the maintenance burden. It seems to me that it has failed to achieve those goals.
That being said, pre-1970 timestamps are an area where the long-term maintenance burden is very real and the*overall end-user benefit is exceedingly tiny, even negative. *