Bug#466781: Acknowledgement (tzdata: Timezones using GMT offset appear incorrect (opposite of expected))
Apparently this is due to extensions on the SystemV naming conventions that does affect the "Etc" timezones and not just directly setting TZ to "GMT+X" (e.g. in my example, "Etc/GMT+2" is affected) - I was not aware of the history of the issue, and someone did explain. If that's true, the bug I suppose could be considered somewhat invalid, but as a user I did not expect that behavior and wouldn't expect other users to expect it either (it took a while to find someone with an answer). If the expected behavior is "Using GMT+X in tzconfig to set an 'Etc/GMT+X' timezone actually subtracts X rather than adds X" perhaps a note in tzconfig that these are "backwards" would be an appropriate short term resolution. It took me a while to stumble on the answer.
Another suggested alternative would be to support something like "TZ=+0500" which doesn't have any SystemV legacy and is ISO 8601 style formatting.
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