Bug 478566

Summary:	RFE: TZData refers to EST instead of AEST/AEDT
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Nigel Jones <dev>
Component:	tzdata	Assignee:	Petr Machata <pmachata>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	rawhide	CC:	mdshaikh, mmcallis, mnewsome, pmachata, ted
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	FutureFeature
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Enhancement
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2009-01-05 11:17:28 UTC	Type:	---
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Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Embargoed:

Description Nigel Jones 2009-01-01 03:51:08 UTC

Description of problem:
The tzdata definition files for Australia/* provide incorrect reference to the time zone names as listed by the Australian Government and known by residents.

The problem is:

According to tzdata, EST could be (particularly at this time of the year):
GMT-5
GMT+10
GMT+11

The last two, are definitions under the Australia/* bracket, and refer to eastern Australia during standard time, and 'summer time'.

An example of the problem would be:
[njones@njones ~]$ TZ="Australia/Brisbane" date
Thu Jan  1 13:44:55 EST 2009
[njones@njones ~]$ TZ="Australia/Sydney" date
Thu Jan  1 14:45:01 EST 2009

There is no difference between the two dates, which creates confusion... "WHICH EST?!?!?!"

How is it solved?  Well the Australia Government, backs the use of appending an 'A' to the start of the timezone name to make this less confusing, it's not in legislation, but it's common sense. I refer to: http://www.australia.gov.au/Time

Under this, my expected output would be:
[njones@njones ~]$ TZ="Australia/Brisbane" date
Thu Jan  1 13:44:55 AEST 2009
[njones@njones ~]$ TZ="Australia/Sydney" date
Thu Jan  1 14:45:01 AEDT 2009

This would solve all potential issues and confusion that could be had with these timezones.

There is a patch for tzdata 2008b at: http://tedp.id.au/~ted/australia-names.diff that should be easy to adapt.

Comment 1 Petr Machata 2009-01-05 11:17:28 UTC

Requests similar to yours have been discussed on upstream list in past, most recently in this thread from 08/2008:
  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.time.tz/2262

In the end, the thread doesn't bias one way or another.  The only conclusion that I can draw from that is that there's no single way of referring to Australian time (see e.g. article 2262 from Eric Ulevik: ABC NewsRadio use two different EST abbreviations).

Australian government site has been mentioned, and it has been pointed out that government has no saying in matters of DST, and that it's the right of states.

I've sent a notice about this bug report upstream, to the same thread that I link above.  Chances are the discussion will resume, and there will actually be an outcome this time.  In the meantime, I'm going to stick with upstream.