[LEAPSECS] POSIX and C (Was: Re: ISO Influence)

[Magnus Danielson]

On 12/26/2010 12:04 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> In message<4D1676FE.32284.16EABE95 at dan.tobias.name>, "Daniel R. Tobias" writes

> :

>

>> So what that means is, even if you get the redefinition of UTC you're

>> loudly pushing for, the legislatures of the world are free to totally

>> ignore it and start using something else, sundials maybe, instead.

>

> Absolutely.

>

> But given that very few, if any of these have actually legislated

> about leap-seconds, yet they still apply them to their local

> timescale from the underlying UTC timescale, I think we can safely

> assume that they will continue to follow UTC in this respect.


If the legislation is for a certain offset from UTC, then leap seconds 
is implied from the current UTC definition and would require no 
definition of leap seconds as such.


> The entire point of the Meter Convention and of eliminating the

> leap-second hack from UTC, is that we don't need to deal with each

> government one by one.


Assuming of course that the UTC matches up what governments think they 
want, or they would legislate for something different, such as reverting 
back to mean solar time suitably offset from the Greenwich meridian.

One could end breaking something else while trying to fix one thing.

Cheers,
Magnus