The utter mess of current timezone definitions (was: Comparing offset-aware and offset-naive datetimes?)

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>> but I happen to know its offset is 0 (i.e. GMT).
>
> As further fuel for your hatred: GMT is not the same thing as UTC+0, and
> never has been. (See the definitions of those two separate timezones for
> more; Wikipedia's articles are probably a good start.)

For most people's purposes, GMT and UTC are equivalent. I tell people
that my D&D sessions are Sundays from 2:00 UTC to roughly 6:00-7:00
UTC, and if they treat that as GMT, they're not going to miss the
session. It's a lot better than a mess of "local time" with DST.

Timezones aren't a problem. Daylight/Summer time (or Ireland's
alternative, Winter time) is.

ChrisA