My 0.02: Using EST (static UTC-5) only slightly bothers me. What bothers me more is the tight deadline to get any software updates done and out there.
If EST speeds up the TZ database update process and uses past practices, I'm for it. I'm new to the IANA mailing list and all this is new to me, but I'd assume the debate of whether to use "MBT" or some other convention can be opened up later after things are settled. I'd assume that there's not incredible pain in having multiple timezone definitions for the same UTC offset as well but happy to get educated.
