Java ignoring Daylight Savings Time

[david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org (david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org)]

I posted this problem in Sun's support forum and didn't get an answer
there, but I finally found the solution.  But the solution is so bat-s**t
crazy, I just had to post it here.

I've used Calendar, Date, and System.currentTimeMillis().  It all converts
to one hour earlier than it should.  If it's now 8:54 EST (12:54 GMT), and
the time from all of those translate to 7:54am.  Googling around I
couldn't see a fix, but I do see clear indications that the problem is a
time zone one.

Here's the answer, which I found at
http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t679924-p4-diagnose-why-pacific-tz-has-wrong-startstop-dates-for-dst-with-jdk16-on-ubuntu.html

Sun's Java under Linux needs /etc/localtime to be a symbolic link to the
right timezone file under /usr/share/zoneinfo. Even if /etc/localtime is
checksum identical to the timezone file, it won't work right, because it
uses the name of the file being linked to to determine certain
information. If /etc/localtime is NOT a symbolic link to a timezone file,
it uses the name of the first timezone file it finds with identical
contents to /etc/localtime.

I am not impressed with this design. Who came up with that?