Java Timezone Information 2011g … The community release is here :)

Egypt has recently stopped working with DST time, so we need to update our timezone information with the latest updates, as a normal user for java, I used to download the TZUpdater tool which was always available for free from SUN …

But not anymore, as Oracle started to show its ugly face, if you go to http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tzdata-versions-138805.html you’ll see the following notice

TZUT v1.3.39 now available containing the Olson 2011g update. Please contact your local Oracle Support Office to obtain this version. For questions, please contact Oracle Support.

Go ahead and try to call Oracle local support office, and they’ll let you know that the update is only available to paying customers, could you imagine the impact of this on thousands and thousands of companies and users ???

I mean what the hell Oracle was thinking !!!

So, for those who know me well, they know that I cannot accept to feel hand-coughed, I need to fix the problems with java timezone as soon as possible, so I decided to build the entire timezone information from scratch … and Yes, I really did it, and I called it tzupdater-1_3_39-2011g-community.zip … 🙂