Timezone for deadlines [LWN.net]

Timezone for deadlines

Posted Mar 27, 2025 11:32 UTC (Thu) by jnareb (subscriber, #46500)
Parent article: OSI election ends with unsatisfying results

> Faraone said that it seemed arbitrary and capricious to govern elections by UTC when the organization is based in California. They urged OSI to reconsider the policy and allow them to stand for election, but the organization declined to do so.

I can understand using the local timezone of place of incorporation, but in my opinion when giving deadlines it is best to provide them in *Anywhere on Earth* (AoE) timezone.

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Timezone for deadlines

Posted Mar 27, 2025 11:51 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Any timezone with a fixed UTC offset would work - AoE as UTC-12 is fine, but UTC+12 would also be fine, as would something weird like UTC-15:30.

Key is to avoid things that are under political control - daylight savings, timezone as used in a specific location etc. You really don't want to be in a position where a government body can unintentionally (or intentionally) throw off your timetable by changing the laws that apply to a location, and you don't want confusion because someone "knows" that their timezone is normally (say) 9 hours difference to San Francisco, when it's currently 8 hours difference (which is true for anyone in France right now, for example).

Timezone for deadlines

Posted Mar 27, 2025 12:02 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

If you have an international audience - use a timezone! Don't care which. Just specify it as UTC+-, not something stupid like BST which has an official meaning, and a dominant meaning, about 6 hours apart!

Especially for countries that span multiple timezones, I would have assumed stating the zone would come naturally.

Cheers,
Wol

Timezone for deadlines

Posted Mar 29, 2025 7:47 UTC (Sat) by anton (subscriber, #25547) [Link]

Anywhere on Earth has become the standard for Calls for Papers, for a good reason: You don't want anybody to miss the deadline on a technicality. Of course, if you actually want all but your preferred candidates to miss the deadline on a technicality, you set an earlier deadline and only communicate it to the preferred candidates.