[LEAPSECS] Leap smear

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 20 September 2011 13:51, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:

>> You wouldn't be leaping UTC, you'd be leaping civil time.  We're

>> used to that.

> Though we're not used to any local civil times being over 24 hours

> removed from UTC, which would happen eventually after a few millennia

> of UTC being uncoupled from solar time.


Yes, the tzdata offset "solution" has odd consequences. Many people
know and use the +01:00 notation for Paris or -05:00 notation for New
York. Having those start changing dramatically isn't appealing to
me... +37:00 for Paris anyone?

I'd also note that plenty of code/standards assumes that the offset is
limited in range, such as -14:00 to +14:00. There is a cost to change
right there.

Plus, there is another more subtle down side. By using tzdata for
this, it places the control in the hands of politicians. Whereas, up
until now, the core definition of civil time (GMT/UTC) has essentially
been controlled by scientists and technologists (sure you might argue
on some finer details in that claim, but in broad brush I'd argue it
is very true). Personally, I think it would be very unwise to give up
control to politician of the core clock that is used by the world's
population (yes, "UTC" would still be driven by science, but it would
be irrelevant to real people, in the same way that TAI is today).
Saying that people just care about the time on the news or their wall
isn't enough - they do care about offsets too, and decoupling those
from anything meaningful is just asking for trouble.

Stephen