Chaos feared after UNIX time-zone database is nuked

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/07/unix_time_zone_database_destroyed/

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
The Register
7th October 2011

The internet's authoritative source for time-zone data has been shut down after 
the volunteer programmer who maintained it was sued for copyright infringement 
by a maker of astrology software.

David Olson, custodian of the Time Zone and Daylight Saving Time Database, said 
on Thursday he was retiring the FTP server he's long maintained. Also known as 
the Olson database, it's the official reference Unix machines use to set clocks 
to local time and is used by countless websites and applications to reconcile 
time differences across the world.

“A civil suit was filed on September 30 in federal court in Boston,” Olson 
wrote in the message posted to the mailing list for the FTP site. “I'm a 
defendant; the case involves the time zone database.” He then permanently 
disbanded the list. Olson wasn't immediately available to comment for this 
article.

The suit was filed in federal court last week by Astrolabe, a Brewster, 
Massachusetts-based maker of astrology-related software. It claimed the 
database Olson has maintained as public service for years unlawfully included 
data contained in The ACS Atlas, which Astrolabe sells for commercial profit.

[...]

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