-`get_date' was originally implemented by Steven M. Bellovin
-(<smb@research.att.com>) while at the University of North Carolina at
-Chapel Hill. The code was later tweaked by a couple of people on
-Usenet, then completely overhauled by Rich $alz (<rsalz@bbn.com>) and
-Jim Berets (<jberets@bbn.com>) in August, 1990. Various revisions for
-the GNU system were made by David MacKenzie, Jim Meyering, Paul Eggert
-and others.
+`parse_datetime' started life as `getdate', as originally implemented
+by Steven M. Bellovin (<smb@research.att.com>) while at the University
+of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The code was later tweaked by a
+couple of people on Usenet, then completely overhauled by Rich $alz
+(<rsalz@bbn.com>) and Jim Berets (<jberets@bbn.com>) in August, 1990.
+Various revisions for the GNU system were made by David MacKenzie, Jim
+Meyering, Paul Eggert and others, including renaming it to `get_date' to
+avoid a conflict with the alternative Posix function `getdate', and a
+later rename to `parse_datetime'. The Posix function `getdate' can
+parse more locale-specific dates using `strptime', but relies on an
+environment variable and external file, and lacks the thread-safety of
+`parse_datetime'.