From: "Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI)"
Remember that the Rules tell when DST transitions happen; in the above case, the Rule that's valid is one that specifies the last transition before May 2004, which is assumed to be in effect in perpetuity.
Excerpts from the zic.8 documentation file: " A rule line has the form Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S .... TO Gives the final year in which the rule applies. In addition to minimum and maximum (as above), the word only (or an abbreviation) may be used to repeat the value of the FROM field. .... The fields that make up a zone line are: Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES/SAVE FORMAT [UNTIL] .... UNTIL The time at which the UTC offset or the rule(s) change for a location. It is specified as a year, a month, a ..... " The Rule and Zone (continuation) lines from the example are: Rule ROK 1987 1988 - Oct Sun<=14 0:00 0 S Zone... 9:00 ROK K%sT If I am interpreting the documentation correctly, then the last Zone line says that there is a Rule "ROK" in effect, but for dates after Sunday October 09, 1988 no Rule can be found. The DST rules were changed, so, strictly speaking, and according to the documentation, there should be a new Zone line. For users of the TZ software there is no problem I guess, but developers who can only use the database files, encounter minor problems interpreting the database. Oscar van Vlijmen 2004-05-17