Looking for Free time zone map data

Robin Paulson robin.paulson at gmail.com
Sun Oct 5 21:53:48 CEST 2008


2008/10/6 Jan Lübbe <jluebbe at openmoko.org>:
> We were thinking about how to handle timezones in the FSO framework and
> decided we would like to be able to detect the time zone automatically
> based on the current location. I've search for a database with the
> necessary information, but i only found a commercial provider which
> doesn't allow redistribution.
>
> Does anyone have an idea how we could solve this problem?

sounds like information that could be managed in the openstreetmap
database. it is after all geodata, and osm is pretty relaxed as to
what info is added

if you added a key to the wiki through the usual discussion/voting
progress and talked it up on the osm-talk mailing list, i bet you
could have it populated very quickly, and it would be a very
non-restrictive license

how many discrete time zones are there after all? can't be more than 100?

i understand william's reticence, but so long as the data is kept up
to date and/or there's a way to override it, there should be no
problems - nz dst has changed again recently and the some older phones
have had some problems, so i know where he's coming from




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