[LEAPSECS] ISO Influence

[Magnus Danielson]

On 12/20/2010 12:21 AM, Tony Finch wrote:

> On 19 Dec 2010, at 01:18, Magnus Danielson<magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org>  wrote:

>>

>> This is true, if we by "computing" means POSIX.

>

> There are many standards other than POSIX which use a POSIX timescale or one equivalent to it. For example, NTFS, DNSSEC and NTP's basic timescale.


 From an epidemiological perspective this changes nothing, but only 
confirms and goes along the same line. One way or another they do build 
on POSIX and inherit behaviour, good or bad.


>> POSIX as extended by NTP kernel interface may however provide sufficient information to represent UTC.

>

> For the current time, yes, but all the higher level libraries cannot represent UTC so code can't do calculations with time correctly.


Ah, but you should avoid "all the higher" when you most probably meant 
"most, nearly all" as there is a few pieces of software which do support 
it. It is however ridiculously rare today. It could be changed. Actually 
add the support isn't all that hard in most places, finding all the bugs 
in their intricacies is.

Cheers,
Magnus