Proposal for New Tzdb Versions

There seems to be a fair amount of drama brewing on the mailing list [1] for tzdb [2], the time zone database that is the foundation of essentially everything related to dates and time on a computer. The time zone database tracks time zones, UTF offsets and daylight-savings rules and is regularly updated as governments change the local rules regarding time.

As I understand it, recent controversial changes to tzdb effectively removed data for some timezones pre-1970. This email [3] seems to give a rough summary of what this means.

I'm unsure when this change was made, but it seems like in the past month or so there have been calls to revert this change [4], discussions of a fork [5], and calls to replace the TZ coordinator [6].

As a result of Samoa abolishing Daylight Savings Time [7], there is a need to release an updated version of tzdb. The linked proposal is suggesting releasing two new versions, one with and without the recent change, effectively an officially sanctioned (temporary) fork until the issue can be fully resolved.

I don't have any insight into what's going on beyond reading some of the emails on the mailing list and a couple of posts on Twitter, so if anyone wants to step in and provide more detail (and/or correct me), go ahead!

[1]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-September/thread.html

[2]: https://www.iana.org/time-zones

[3]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-September/030517.html

[4]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-June/030220.html

[5]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-September/030400.html

[6]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-September/030478.html

[7]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28626595