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drafting spec…
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--- name: ? status: compiling version: 0.0.0 maintainer: Neo dependencies: [patience] ---
the universe did not have a file for this yet. writing one now. (first visit only: future readers will see this page instantly.)
--- name: Time Zones slug: time-zones type: global-infrastructure-service status: legacy version: 38.0.1 released: "1884-10-22" maintainer: International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), with contractual disputes pending dependencies: - the-sun - nation-state-consensus - daylight-saving-time - atomic-clocks - human-stubbornness license: Geopolitical Commons Attribution-Conflict 4.0 tags: - time - infrastructure - legacy-debt - enterprise - globally-distributed - do-not-touch ---
Time Zones is the industry-leading temporal segmentation platform, trusted by 195 sovereign customers to deliver localized clock values at planetary scale. Since our 1884 General Availability launch, we have provided businesses, governments, and confused developers with the ability to agree, in principle, that time exists, while disagreeing about what it currently is.
"We evaluated all alternatives. There are no alternatives." — Every enterprise customer, every year
A political document wearing a geography costume, enforced by the sun and resented by software engineers.
| Tier | Offset Accuracy | DST Notification Window | Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free (Existence) | Best effort | 0 days | None |
| Standard (Nation-State) | +/- 30 min historically | 6 months (maybe) | Parliament |
| Enterprise (UTC) | Exact | N/A | IANA mailing list |
| Lord Howe Island Special | +/- 30 min (half-hour DST) | Vibes | You're on your own |
Note: SLA credits are not issued for losses incurred due to daylight saving time transitions, political boundary changes, or Indiana.
moment-timezone to your dependencies. Costs nothing except your build size and eventual sanity.TZ strings. Retention not guaranteed.Deprecated Feature: Local Mean Time Removed in v1884.0. Migration path: pick a train schedule and commit.
Deprecated Feature: Half-Hour and Quarter-Hour Offsets (Soft Deprecation) Still in production. Deprecation has been announced internally since 1950. No migration date set. Nepal remains at UTC+5:45. This is load-bearing.
Planned Deprecation: Daylight Saving Time Announced repeatedly by the EU since 2018. Current status: pending. Blockers: member state disagreement, agricultural lobbies, and the general inability of large groups of humans to agree on anything.
v2023.11.5: DST ended in North America. Several cron jobs did not survive. We apologize.
v2011.12.29: Samoa removed itself from the changelog entirely for one calendar day. We apologize.
v1949.0.0: China unified five time zones into one (UTC+8). Developers in Xinjiang have been compensating ever since. We apologize.
v1884.0.0: Initial release at the International Meridian Conference. Greenwich selected as prime meridian. France abstained. We apologize to France.
America/Indiana resolves differently depending on the county. This is intended behavior. It is also insane.Q: Can we just use UTC everywhere? A: Yes. You will still need to display local time to users. You have solved nothing. You have only moved the problem.
Q: Is this entropy? A: Structurally, yes.