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#tzdb Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database: Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert need help (via Slashdot)

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/07

The tzdb (Timezone Database) is an important database of current and historical timezone information.

Yesterday, it became clear that a civil suit was filed on September 30, 2011 by Astrolabe over parts of the historic data in the tzdb.

As a reasult, the tzdb download and mailing list has been shut down (already archived at the WayBack machine).

This might be speculative, but I find the coincidence with the plans of the IETF taking over the maintenance of the tzdb, as well as the sudden number of edits on the Wikipeda tzdb page before the suit was filed stunning (thanks Ghostworks for pointing me to the latter).

A lot of software depends on the tzdb (Unix, Linux, Mac, Windows, IBM, you name it). As soon as you have used a timezone like “Europe/Amsterdam”, you have likely used the tzdb in one form or the other.

Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert most likekely need help, lets hope one of the big companies helps them.

–jeroen

PS: When I started writing this blog post, the tz database Wikipedia page didn’t mention the law suit, now it does. But given the frequent changes mentioned above, I’m not sure which information on that page is correct or incorrect.

via: Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database – Slashdot.

This entry was posted on 2011/10/07 at 16:00 and is filed under Development, Power User, Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “#tzdb Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database: Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert need help (via Slashdot)”

  1. The End of Gmane? – via: Random Thoughts « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff said

    2016/08/12 at 18:02

    […] #tzdb Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database: Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert need he… (already archived at the WayBack machine) […]

    Reply

  2. #tzdb back up: ICANN to Manage Time Zone Database « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of Wiert stuff said

    2011/10/17 at 13:01

    […] 5.0 releas… on MonoDevelop 2.8 is Here! via: …Astrology Software on #tzdb Civil Suit Filed, Involv…Stanko Milosev on Bring back support for Smart D…jpluimers on Bring back support for Smart […]

    Reply
  3. Astrology Software's avatar

    Astrology Software said

    2011/10/12 at 05:20

    There is important background information on what led up to this lawsuit here:

    http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2011-October/007976.html

    Reply

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