On 2026-07-28 19:13, Lord Buddha wrote:
While advocating for a year's notice or any change, can I advocate that any release of timedata is also a year in advance of that change.
Yes. Downstream will need a lot of time for this change, if it happens. If Congress gives us a year's notice we should be able to return the favor downstream. The last time the US changed its rules, the change became law on August 8, 2005, we got a heads-up email that day from Jonathan Lennox[1], Arthur circulated draft changes the next day[2], and after some discussion (partly involving a malfunctioning email server) release 2005l was published August 22[3], more than eighteen months before the effective date of the change on in March 2007. Things went reasonably smoothly in 2007. The currently-proposed changes will be considerably harder to implement than the 2007 changes so it won't go as smoothly. Still, I hope that if the bill becomes law we can push out a new TZDB release just as quickly as we did on August 2005, and maybe even more so; part of the idea of the speculative patch was to accelerate that process, if it happens. Like 2005, it's likely we would need multiple TZDB releases, as other jurisdictions like Canada and Mexico decide whether and when to follow the US's lead. Plus, the first release embodying the timekeeping change will likely contain typos not discovered until people try it out, just as release 2005l had typos re time in Indiana[4]. [1]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2005-August/038164.html [2]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2005-August/038166.html [3]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2005-August/038187.html [4]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2005-August/038190.html
