Policy on DST

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Dec  3, 2008, Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com> wrote:

> Paul W. Frields (stickster at gmail.com) said: 
>> Most of our contributor base observes some sort of DST, so we should
>> simply set dates on which the schedule shifts automatically.  We need
>> not use USA standards for the date of the shifting.

> Well, we'll annoy one hemisphere either way. But I'm for it.

It's a choice between not annoying one hemisphere and annoying the
other by variations of up to two hours over the year, or annoying
everyone equally, although at different times of the year.

Being in the Southern hemisphere, I feel the pain of not being able to
allocate any other personal appointments on afternoons in which I have
Red Hat meetings, because they may cover say 2-3pm at part of the
year, 3-4pm at another (short) part of the year, and 4-5pm at yet
another part of the year.

So I understand the pain you're talking about when you're annoyed by a
one-hour change.  But considering that not all countries observe DST,
even in the Northern Hemisphere, and those that do switch at different
times, a large number of people will be inconvenienced no matter what
you do.

Should the pain be shared by all countries that observe DST, or should
it be focused on those that depart from some arbitrary standard set
elsewhere (country or Fedora)?  I don't know.  No solution is
particularly fair, so I guess it's just a matter of optimization:
minimizing the pain inflicted on contributors.

Would it make sense to hold an election?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva           http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist      Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer