Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Roedy Green Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: the Olson Timezone Database Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:05:06 -0800 Organization: Canadian Mind Products Lines: 35 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Roedy Green NNTP-Posting-Host: Z2l1DcCELS0rATq8NqV4Sw.user.speranza.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 6.00/32.1186 Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:12021 On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:01:14 -0500, Eric Sosman wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said : > ... as reported in "The Register" -- four months and one >week ago. In other news, rebels against the Crown are causing >minor disturbances in some of the North American colonies. The link is on my site, so I am aware of that. Today is an important milestone in the story. JDK 1.7.0_03 came out -- the last version of Java to use the Olson database. This sort of information comes out well ahead of the implementation, so JDK 1.7.0_03 can have current timezone data even though Olson was shut down last year. However, the entire computing community has a problem. Unless these bastards are sued out of existence, the entire existing Olson database is in legal limbo. It might require rebuilding it from original sources in a clean room. But of course it might not exactly match the existing data. This is a nightmare. The only proper solution sending them packing. I suppose Oracle could settle, but that would really gall me. Astrolabe could then SELL this database over and over to everyone who needs timezone data. It would be outrageous that they would profit from such a deliberately malicious act. They can bully an individual like Olson, but surely not Oracle, IBM, ... I want them punished. -- Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products http://mindprod.com One of the most useful comments you can put in a program is "If you change this, remember to change ?XXX? too".