Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert are being sued by the (new) owner of
the copyright on one of the atlases that is much used as a source for
the database, claiming that the database infringes on said copyright.
The claim appears to be without merit, but it's got to court, and as an
interim measure Olson has suspended the database maintenance mailing
list and the FTP site from which it is distributed.  Unknown how long
this state of affairs will last.  Links:

http://slashdot.org/story/11/10/06/1743226/
http://www.thedailyparker.com/PermaLink,guid,c5f28bae-4b9c-41ea-b7b7-8891ad63c938.aspx
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.time.tz/4133
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/massachusetts/madce/1:2011cv11725/139342/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database

For the time being, I believe the best course of action in the
DateTime::TimeZone world is to continue using, developing, disseminating,
and supporting our software as before.  There will merely be no imminent
new version of the Olson database.  We must watch to see whether this
will be a protracted state of affairs, and if so see what consensus
emerges about the future of the database.

-zefram

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