On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 18:11, Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk> wrote:
Now that we have a quite complete history of the development of the tz database, it would be interesting to see how many of the corrections added to the 'olsen' database have subsequently been applied to the later issues of the Atlas? And how many 'facts' remain incorrect :)
While I think the code history is important, I read bits and pieces of the mailing list in the process of building the historical code repo. First its quite interesting to read the discussions about things that had seemed long decided by the time I entered uni - but were actually still being decided at that time. The number of contributors was and is amazing. It's really a shame that the email addresses and names have been so stripped from the archive. Yet another thing spamming scum have to answer for. Perhaps the answer is to bring back UUCP for geeks. But the critical thing I note is that very often people cited their sources. Yes Shanks and ACS are referenced, but so are a host of other sources. Old newspapers, radio programmes, other books, old legislation. I have no idea how to compile such data. I've been using mboxgrep to search the copy of tzarchive I reconstructed from the iana.org list, but it's hard to find the right phrases. Unlike the historical source archive it will take quite some time to reconstruct all of the sources mentioned in the mailing list and tie them in to the actual data in the files (and note, I'm not doing it, I was just curious to see if it was difficult - it is). The files do contain credits throughout, but the mailing list covers what sources were consulted and why one was favoured over the other. Every entry in there was carefully researched and validated from what I've read - and from time to time pretty much every source was over-ruled, modified or clarified. Anything else is speculation, but my personal opinion - regardless of the legal issues - is that Astrolabe is run by a jerk. In my mind the correct end for all this is for him to admit that and apologise. Kevin -- Kevin Lyda Dublin, Ireland US Citizen overseas? We can vote. Register now: http://www.votefromabroad.org/