[LEAPSECS] Calendar authority

[Markus Kuhn]

"Poul-Henning Kamp" wrote on 2012-04-03 21:53 UTC:

> In message <49F1293B-4F70-4515-881B-CD12C43CC45E at bsdimp.com>, Warner Losh write

> s:

> 

> >Wouldn't that need to be done by the Pope?  Has the Vatican ever

> >delegated continuing maintenance of the Gregorian Calendar to a

> >third party? 

> 

> The ISO secretariat claimed at one point that the controlling

> document were an ISO standard, but couldn't tell me which one...


Section 3.2.1 of ISO 8601:2004 does formally define the "Gregorian
calendar" and the "proleptic Gregorian calendar". It anchors it in
history by stating that the "Convention du Metre" was signed in Paris on
20 May 1875. It also gives the usual leap-year rule and clarifies in a
note that the calendar year [0000] in the proleptic Gregorian calendar
is a leap year.

But, like the definition of (universal coordinated) time in ITU-R
TF.460, such standards documents are only widely accepted because they
are compatible with commonly accepted historic practice. They do not
actually confer authority onto their authors to change common practice. I
don't think the authority of ISO to define what calendar we use is any
higher than (say) the authority of Wikipedia on such matters. They both
are merely widely-respected committees reporting on what the current
consensus is. Neither ISO standards, ITU recommendations, nor Wikipedia
articles are the right place to start a revolution. Your edits will be
reverted quickly unless you have managed to build consensus first.


> I wouldn't be surprised if UN has some kind of rule about which

> calendar to use to schedule and call meetings, and whatever that

> document says, would have a very credible claim to being "it".


ITU, UN, ... same thing. You don't revolutionize the world by editing
obscure documents that are kept from readers behind paywalls and that
only very few geeks ever have read in the original.

The Vatican hardly has significant authority in these matters today.
They had enormous troubles already back in 1582 to get leap-year changes
implemented everywhere, in spite of enthusiastic support from the
astronomic timekeeping community.

Editing a document is trivial. Building consensus for "a new order of
things" (see Nicolo Machiavelli: The Prince, Chapter VI) is difficult.
It takes a lot of time and excellent arguments, and still fails more
often than not.

Markus

-- 
Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain