61472314_Letter from the Embassy of Ukraine

Andrii Yanevskyi, thank you for your letter of October 31 about the timezone of Crimea. First, here is a bit of background. The timezone database (tzdb) is intended as an aid for users to help them select timezones appropriate for their practical needs. If civil time as observed in a region is a particular offset from Coordinated Universal Time, the established tzdb practice is to record that region's civil time the way it is typically observed, independently of what it ought to be. In other words, tzdb is descriptive not prescriptive, and (as stated in its documentation) tzdb is "by no means authoritative" and "is not intended to take or endorse any position on legal or territorial claims." Second, here is a possible solution for the situation you describe. Because tzdb is not authoritative, the government of Ukraine could publish a version that has been adjusted to conform to Ukrainian law and regulations and that is authoritative for Ukraine. That way, users who prefer Crimean time as specified in Ukrainian law could use the adjusted copy of tzdb. Please feel free to contact the tz mailing list <tz@iana.org> if you have further questions or comments. PS. The tz mailing list normally uses plain text, so it would help communication somewhat if you could send email as plain text instead of as PDF files. Please see <https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2019-November/thread.html> for examples of typical email sent to the list, and <https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2019-October/028553.html> for the awkward way that our archiving software presents your PDF-formatted email.
participants (2)
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Embassy of Ukraine in the USA
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Paul Eggert