[Alexander Walters]

...

1. no one will expect the datetime module is_dst to map to the posix mktime

function.

[Alexander Belopolsky]

Please don't overgeneralize. The fact that *I* would expect "is_dst" in local to UTC converstion to act as the familiar "tm_isdst" does in local to "seconds since 1970-01-01T00:00 UTC" conversion is enough to invalidate your claim about "no one". I also suspect I am not alone.

You're far from alone, but there's no need to argue the point: you already won ;-) That is, Guido already Pronounced on this:

https://mail.python.org/pipermail/datetime-sig/2015-July/000094.html ... The road to improvement that I encourage everyone to explore: add an is_dst flag (with a different name) ...

And you've already explained why at length: the intended meaning of tm_isdst is baffling in some cases, so we do want different semantics, but because CPython is intended to work nicely with C code written by C programmers it's always a mistake to use similar names in similar contexts when the semantics differ in fundamental ways. "first" is a good solution: not confusable with any familiar name in C's view of time, and its meaning is both sensible and utterly clear in all ambiguous cases.

At least until the next C standard adds tm_first to mean "equal to tm_isdst except in rare cases of double (or greater) leap seconds, in which case the value is as specified by the Finely Interpolated Real Second Time (FIRST) standard" ;--)