19:32
The other alternative is to store the offset from GMT at the time of publishing and I don't see the practical difference between that and what it is done now. @Howdy_McGee, you need the standard time to sort things in accurate chronological way and you need the "human" time to display it is a way in which it will make sense to humans.
I assume that it could have been just calculated with a good time zone software from the GMT value as most people do not change the timezone settings, but you probably have to have it for the 1% that do.
@Jean-philippeEmond, it is called tehnical debt, the more debt you have the bigger the interest you will need to pay once you decide to close the debt
core just promises backward compatibility, but in reality it is something that is almost impossible to achieve for 100% of the features and use cases