FW: [Fwd: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com]
Note that Doug Royer is not on the time zone mailing list; be sure to direct any replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Doug Royer [SMTP:doug@home.royer.com] Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 6:47 PM To: ietf-calendar@imc.org; tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov Subject: [Fwd: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com] The timezones.external@software.com list is for public discussion of timezone information. IANA as part of the IETF is looking into administrating the names of world wide time zones. This list will be an alias of IETF and non-IETF participants interested in porting the 'zic' software and its data format. There are three goals of this list. 1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) to other OS's and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE format. Most UNIX's use the government database format and the zic compiler (man zic). 2) Convert the government database into VTIMEZONE records for IANA to administer. 3) Give away the results to the public domain. And if someone want to volunteer - make a converter to go from VTIMEZONE format to zic input format to keep the databases in sync. This list will go away after the above 3 these goals have been met. RFC-2445 defines VTIMEZONE. The government database source, zic source, and other related source is available from: ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub ----------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe, send mail to timezones.external-request@software.com with 'subscribe' in the body of the message. ----------------------------------------------------------------- <<Card for Doug Royer>>
Doug Royer <doug@home.royer.com>:
There are three goals of this list.
1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) to other OS's and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE format. Most UNIX's use the government database format and the zic compiler (man zic).
2) Convert the government database into VTIMEZONE records for IANA to administer.
3) Give away the results to the public domain.
There might be a few misunderstandings involved here. First, there is no "government timezone database". What you see on ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ is the collaboration of a number of volunteers (Arthur Olson, Paul Eggert, et al.), the result of which is commonly referred to as the public domain "Olson database". The only relation to the US government is that the group has been using an ftp server of the National Cancer Institute, which happens to be located in the .gov domain. There exists already a well-established mailing list for discussions on time zones and the maintenance of the Olson database, namely tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov Contact tz-request@elsie.nci.nih.go to join the club. Since there is a lot of accumulated expertise on this mailing list, handing over the administration of the database to IANA seems to be a rather dubious buerocratic effort. Who at IANA would take over authority over the database and is really comparably qualified to the current contributors of the Olson database who have done a splendid job for the last 15 years? Please understand that IANA is a registration service, while what the group around Olson is doing is more a detective service that observes and documents the highly complicated world of national and regional decisions about time-zone changes in the world. If government X is going to change its local time zone, it is more likely that the database maintainer will hear about this from various informers or media reports around the world, as well as resources such as IATA or CIA. It is much less likely that the respective countries will report timezone changes directly to IANA officially. A detective service can provide a more accurate representation of the real world than a registration service. Just dropping the maintenance of the time zone database into the responsibility of IANA might give them a task they underestimate at the moment. If you don't like the current zic format, feel free to add a zic-> VTIMEZONE format converter to the Olson package. Looks mostly like a bijective transform to me, except that the zic input files contain a lot of valuable comments that identify official reference documents. Only if the output of that converter on the regular updates of the Olson package turns out to be unsatisfactory, I would start worrying about setting up a parallel bureaucracy and an independent database. I see really no need for yet another mailing list.
RFC-2445 defines VTIMEZONE.
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:US--Fictitious-Eastern LAST-MODIFIED:19870101T000000Z BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:19671029T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:19870405T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=1SU;BYMONTH=4;UNTIL=19980404T070000Z TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:19990424T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=4 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE If people really think that this looks that much nicer or easier to parse for machines and humans ... Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
Hi, Since I'm on both ietf-calendar (http://www.imc.org/ietf-calendar/) and a lurker on the tz mailing list (ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/), perhaps I can offer a bit of clarification here. As everyone on both lists realizes, timezones is one of the major "gotchas" of scheduling. The tz list is indeed focused on the detective work of determining the changes in timezones, both historical and current. The ietf-calendar list is focused on developing the standard representation of calendar data and the protocols to allow calendar applications to share calendar data easily. In order to ensure that two calendar implementations can interoperate, both need to look at the same database of timezones. Since we're drafting the CAP (Calendar Access Protocol) now, we need to point Calendar implementors at a timezone standard, which of course doesn't exist. The TZ database appears to be the closest thing available, an excellent example of volunteers doing a much needed job. The problem is how to reference it in an RFC? I won't speak for Doug, but I believe he intended to leverage the tz mailing list and the packaged updates, but use the IANA as the "official" repository for standards to reference. The current tzdata ftp site, a US government organization which has nothing to do with timezones, doesn't allow web pages. Why not find a permanent home for this with the IANA (www.iana.org) which has "Dedicated to preserving the central coordinating functions of the global Internet for the public good" as its motto. dmadeo Markus Kuhn wrote:
There might be a few misunderstandings involved here. First, there is no "government timezone database". What you see on ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ is the collaboration of a number of volunteers (Arthur Olson, Paul Eggert, et al.), the result of which is commonly referred to as the public domain "Olson database". The only relation to the US government is that the group has been using an ftp server of the National Cancer Institute, which happens to be located in the .gov domain.
Since there is a lot of accumulated expertise on this mailing list, handing over the administration of the database to IANA seems to be a rather dubious buerocratic effort. Who at IANA would take over authority over the database and is really comparably qualified to the current contributors of the Olson database who have done a splendid job for the last 15 years?
Just dropping the maintenance of the time zone database into the responsibility of IANA might give them a task they underestimate at the moment.
If you don't like the current zic format, feel free to add a zic-> VTIMEZONE format converter to the Olson package. Looks mostly like a bijective transform to me, except that the zic input files contain a lot of valuable comments that identify official reference documents.
Only if the output of that converter on the regular updates of the Olson package turns out to be unsatisfactory, I would start worrying about setting up a parallel bureaucracy and an independent database. I see really no need for yet another mailing list.
RFC-2445 defines VTIMEZONE.
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:US--Fictitious-Eastern LAST-MODIFIED:19870101T000000Z BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:19671029T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:19870405T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=1SU;BYMONTH=4;UNTIL=19980404T070000Z TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:19990424T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=4 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE
If people really think that this looks that much nicer or easier to parse for machines and humans ...
Markus
-- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
There is obviously a lot to what you are saying Markus, but one point remains to be resolved. In the near future we are going to need legal frameworks for access to machine-readable online resources. Maybe that is part of the effort Doug is talking about And we are going to need mechanisms for creating and maintaining aggregations such as the Olson, but that have some official binding to an Authority. Because otherwise people wont know who to sue! BTW the IETF has a parent organization - ISOC, whose raison d´etre is to protect the IETF from the legal repercussions of their standards work. Though it may seem ludicrously utopian at this time to plan for a network of little bots zipping around from the Cook Islands to the Kingdom of Swat, slurping up time zone rulings from each individual authority's machine readable time zone database, that is exactly where we are heading, er, eventually :-) Compare that to this: In Sweden, 78 district courts publish bankruptcy proceedings in a machine-readable metadata format, any agent may crawl these sites or their aggregations at regional levels and undertake actions on behalf of their users based on their readings from these sites without any human interference or approval. One government chartered authorities site is charged with the official machine-readable publishing of an aggregation of all 78 district courts. Thousand of applications will undertake actions on their users behalf based on their readings of this information, again with no human intermediation. This is a non-utopian proposal which we are currently working on. Depending on the degree of sophistication of each authorities infostructure, bit for bit information will be transferred to machine collectable, machine readable authoritive publishing. Since there is already a sufficient level of sophistication in some areas of the world such as the Kingdom of Sweden to go forward with this work, I argue that we should do so and let The Kingdom of Swat catch up when they can, which will of course guarantee lots of exciting detective work for the next 50 years. Agree on a machine readable publishing format and I will pop over to the Department of Commerce and convince them to publish the official daylight savings times of Sweden just to be the first ever to do so:-) Greg /btw that last paragraph was a gross exaggeration of my power to get things done here:-)
Doug Royer <doug@home.royer.com>:
There are three goals of this list.
1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) to other OS's and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE format. Most UNIX's use the government database format and the zic compiler (man zic).
2) Convert the government database into VTIMEZONE records for IANA to administer.
3) Give away the results to the public domain.
There might be a few misunderstandings involved here. First, there is no "government timezone database". What you see on ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ is the collaboration of a number of volunteers (Arthur Olson, Paul Eggert, et al.), the result of which is commonly referred to as the public domain "Olson database". The only relation to the US government is that the group has been using an ftp server of the National Cancer Institute, which happens to be located in the .gov domain.
There exists already a well-established mailing list for discussions on time zones and the maintenance of the Olson database, namely
tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov
Contact
tz-request@elsie.nci.nih.go
to join the club.
Since there is a lot of accumulated expertise on this mailing list, handing over the administration of the database to IANA seems to be a rather dubious buerocratic effort. Who at IANA would take over authority over the database and is really comparably qualified to the current contributors of the Olson database who have done a splendid job for the last 15 years?
Please understand that IANA is a registration service, while what the group around Olson is doing is more a detective service that observes and documents the highly complicated world of national and regional decisions about time-zone changes in the world. If government X is going to change its local time zone, it is more likely that the database maintainer will hear about this from various informers or media reports around the world, as well as resources such as IATA or CIA. It is much less likely that the respective countries will report timezone changes directly to IANA officially. A detective service can provide a more accurate representation of the real world than a registration service.
Just dropping the maintenance of the time zone database into the responsibility of IANA might give them a task they underestimate at the moment.
If you don't like the current zic format, feel free to add a zic-> VTIMEZONE format converter to the Olson package. Looks mostly like a bijective transform to me, except that the zic input files contain a lot of valuable comments that identify official reference documents.
Only if the output of that converter on the regular updates of the Olson package turns out to be unsatisfactory, I would start worrying about setting up a parallel bureaucracy and an independent database. I see really no need for yet another mailing list.
RFC-2445 defines VTIMEZONE.
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:US--Fictitious-Eastern LAST-MODIFIED:19870101T000000Z BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:19671029T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:19870405T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=1SU;BYMONTH=4;UNTIL=19980404T070000Z TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:19990424T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=4 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE
If people really think that this looks that much nicer or easier to parse for machines and humans ...
Markus
-- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
"Greg FitzPatrick" wrote on 2000-02-04 16:53 UTC:
Because otherwise people wont know who to sue!
So what we have to do is to transform the Olson group into something that looks like a sue-able entity, but nevertheless isn't sue-able. There was actually some time ago already a discussion on the tz mailing list to set up something that could be called the International Time Zone Information Centre with a quotable web page, postal address, etc. It would essentially be the old Olson Group, but there would be something like an "Annual Time Zone Newsletter" that will be sent freely to places such as various government ministries, intelligence agencies, news agencies, airline and telecommunications associations (IATA, ITU, etc.), etc. The goal would be to create a point of contact where governments and observers of governments could centrally report time zone changes and also make sure that knowledge of the centre and its current data base content spreads to the right places. The basic idea seemed to have been quite agreeable, but in the end there simply wasn't anyone volunteering to handle the bureaucracy necessary to set up such a small institution. If two or three industrial sponsors would come forward to cover the in the end surely quite marginal running costs of such a small organization, I am sure it would be possible to set up a suitable quotable but not quite sueable body. Publishing a single-page ISO standard that designates the named organization to be the keeper of the ISO 16xyz time zone database would surely sprinkle sufficient official magic around the entire thing to keep even hard-line bureaucrats happy. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
participants (4)
-
David Madeo -
Greg FitzPatrick -
Markus Kuhn -
Olson, Arthur David (NCI)