Re: [tz] Why did you rename Russian zone name abbreviations

Sergei Turchanov wrote:

Why did you rename Russian zone name abbreviations? Can you provide a rationale for this change?

Sure, the basic idea is that the tz database should reflect common practice in English-language abbreviations, rather than inventing and/or imposing abbreviations. So I have been gradually removing invented abbreviations and replacing them with UT offsets. I think Russia is mostly done now, and it's time to turn our attention to other parts of the world.

This change breaks date parsing, etc...

Alphabetic zone abbreviations are ambiguous in practice and any date parsing depending on them is questionable anyway. The above is documented in more detail in the 'Theory' file.