Re: Interesting story: Argentinian clocks
Interesting indeed.
I might suggest emphasizing that this affected systems other than Debian or *nix. I
could see someone being confused and thinking that this was a *nix and/or Debian
problem if we publicize it. It turns out that it affects MS Windows too[1] but they
have no patch available. So emphasizing that it affects many major operating systems
yet Debian was able to get a fix out so quick might be less confusing, or at least keep
a general reader from believing that this was a Debian problem.
[1] - http://blogs.technet.com/latam/archive/2008/10/16/argentinadst-2008-2009.aspx
Steve
On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 07:25:41AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> Just dropping an idea about an interesting item for debian-news or
> so. Not really "written" but probably easy to complete.
>
> Argentinian free software developers fight hard for accurate computers clocks
>
> During October 2008, much noise happened when the clocks of most
> Argentinian servers running free (and some non-free) Unix-like systems
> suddenly drifted by one hour on Oct. 5th
>
> It turned out that some misunderstandings about the day Argentina
> would switch to summer time lead to incorrect information to flow down
> to all timezone settings packages in these systems.
>
> In two weeks, the argentinian community cleared up this mess and, in
> only two days, the timezone setting packages in Debian were fixed as
> soon as decisions were finally be made by Argentinian authorities.
>
> This is a very good example of the reactivity of the free software
> community which no proprietary software vendor can really achieve.
>
> PS: could be completed with stories about similar things for
> Brazil.... Again, this is not very well written but can probably be
> enhanced or completed as I don't know all aspects of the story. I just
> happen to find it interesting.
>
>
> --
>
>
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