> Which I would find "cute" if the database contained an equal amount of reason. I am perennially irritated that "US/Pacific" which is an _official_ name of a time zone _as used_ by the relevant time keeping authority, is called "backwards."

This assumes that every point on earth has exactly 1 governing body and that a significant majority of the people agree on who that governing body is and that the governing body gives a rats ass about what time it is. Or that everyone in a region agrees on what time it is. Or that ccTLDs are sufficient to unambiguously cover the entire earths surface.

The time zone database isnt just a record of "official" decisions regarding time, it is a record of what time a population thinks it is. There are geographic overlaps, cultural overlaps, pants on head stupid overlaps. It exists to try and translate between somebody somewhere some when giving a time and date reference to any point in history to whatever time system the user may choose to believe in.

Your solution is insufficiently complex to solve a problem of this complexity.

https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b...

> Or that everyone in a region agrees on what time it is.

And how does the existence of the tzdb solve this problem in any way?

> Or that ccTLDs are sufficient to unambiguously cover the entire earths surface.

The user can still pick whatever they want. Just as they can now. The user can resolve ambiguity for themselves. Unless the tzdb decides unilaterally that their politically organized name for their timezone is somehow "wrong" and must be moved to the "backwards" file to be removed entirely. In which case they must accept whatever ambiguity the tzdb has created for them. "US/Pacific" is unambiguous. "America/Los_Angeles" is not.

> Your solution is insufficiently complex to solve a problem of this complexity.

You need to solve one problem. Publishing official tz information. If you have extended needs, then by all means, it's a computer, do whatever you like, but for the overwhelming majority of the population of earth, they need one function.

"What time does my government think it is because that time controls when things open, when I'm late for work, and when official paperwork has to be filed."

If you want a "whimsical" database that correctly gets timezones right for certain Japanese islands during the war, then you have that, but honestly, what general use case is there for this?