Andrew Brown <atatat@atatdot.net> writes:
> but whether cyprus is in europe or asia is, and was debated somewhat
> on the tz list recently.  as a result, new time zone data files were
> issued, and cyprus is now in two continents.  i guess if we have no
> users there, we could have avoided that import, yes?

no, because even if we _know_ that right now we don't have users
there, and don't have users who would care about time there, we'd also
have to know that we _never would_.  Both of those are unknowables, so
you can't really use them as the sole basis for such a decision.

Of course, we could have decided that we don't _care_, e.g. that it's
not worth doing the upgrade just to get that.  That's a different
decision.  Obviously, if the upgrade happened solely for the purpose
of getting that change, the person who maintains our timezone code
does care.

BTW, iirc, there is a good, technical reason to spend at least some
time in 'time zone related' maintenance even if you care nothing for
actual time zone changes: leap seconds.  the list of them comes from
the time zone package too, does it not?


> no, but it is my operating system's duty to make sure that i enjoy
> myself.

... and that's a reason for a decision that affects _how many_ users,
using the system for _how many_ different types of work?!



cgd