[LEAPSECS] MST Users: separate list or not?

[Rob Seaman]

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:


> A separate list, where people who are interested can subscribe.


I agree.  This is a separate issue, as is emphasized by the fact that such a time service (whatever the nature of timescale(s) served) could be designed, deployed and operated right now in parallel.

More fundamentally it is separate because it doesn't address the central question.  As I may have asserted previously :-) civil timekeeping *is* mean solar time.  This is an engineering requirement - that is, it describes the problem space.

The suggested service on the other hand is a proposed solution to address whatever ad hoc mix of use cases and their derived requirements.  A trade-off study would be needed to find out how it maps onto the civil timekeeping requirements.

 - Civil timekeeping := the concept of operations
 - Mean Solar Time := an engineering requirement
 - Leap seconds := one technical feature of a solution to realize the requirements

There may be other solutions with other features.  But that's not what we've been free to discuss for the past eleven years.

To solve a problem, first you have to discuss the nature of the problem space, not just individual features of a single class of solution.

Rob