Re: [netmod] Fwd: Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-netmod-iana-timezones-03

[SM <[e-mail]>]

Hi Juergen,
At 02:58 09-01-2014, Juergen Schoenwaelder wrote:
>People want to be able to configure timezones using the timezone
>naming scheme commonly supported by operating systems (e.g.,
>Europe/Paris). This document defines a serialization of the timezone
>names into YANG format for this purpose. I believe there was indeed
>strong concensus on this in the WG.

There was a message about a quick poll [1] to adopt 
draft-lange-netmod-iana-timezones-01 on 2 July, 2012.  Three persons 
expressed their support and the WG Chair expressed his support as a 
technical contributor [2]; there weren't any message objecting to 
adoption.  There were two comments [3][4] on 30 July, 2012.  There 
was a WG Last Call announcement [5] and two reminders [6][7] about 
it. There was a message [8] on 12 November, 2013 from a WG 
participant (I am not taking into account the message from the author 
and one of the WG Chairs).  My comment about the determination of 
consensus being questionable is based on the messages in the NETMOD 
mailing list archive.

>This document aims at establishing an IANA maintained serialization of
>whatever list of names the timezone database contains. It does not
>change the way the TZ coordinator, an IANA Designated Expert, takes
>decisions. Perhaps this needs to be stated more explicit.

There is a thread at 
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2012-May/017711.html  The problem is 
not changing the way things are done.  I would describe the current 
TZ approach as keeping the TZ information up-to-date by posting a 
(software) release every now and then.  It works for me.

>So far (in the MIB world), the initial versions of IANA maintained
>modules were published as Proposed Standards on the standards track
>(although the only thing that really remains valid over time are the
>IANA considerations, which however often require the initial module to
>be available). We simply followed this practice.

If I understood correctly the YANG module defined in the draft 
creates IANA-registered timezones based on public domain [9] 
information about timezones.  IANA is then asked to keep the 
IANA-registered timezones up-to-date.  That sounds okay if the 
politics about time are not taken into consideration [10][11][12].

>There was concensus in the WG that it is desirable to configure
>timezones by name (e.g., Europe/Paris) instead of having only hard
>coded UTC offsets - the benefits should be obvious.

I agree that there can be benefits to that approach.  I could not 
find the (mailing list) message where that WG decision was taken.

Regards,
-sm

1. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/netmod/current/msg06810.html
2. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/netmod/current/msg06841.html
3. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/netmod/current/msg06932.html
4. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/netmod/current/msg06933.html
5. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/netmod/current/msg08327.html
6. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/netmod/current/msg08333.html
7. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/netmod/current/msg08335.html
8. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/netmod/current/msg08694.html
9. ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tz-link.html
10. 
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/sep/26/spain-countries-wrong-time-zone
11. http://972mag.com/the-worlds-only-ethnic-time-zone/81006/
12. 
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/22/just-wait-until-you-see-how-apples-new-operating-system-lists-jerusalem/