[LEAPSECS] happy anniversary pips

[Brooks Harris]

On 2014-02-12 07:47 AM, Warner Losh wrote:

>

> The linux kernel has been touted by some of its proponents as the most tested and verified kernel around. Some may quibble with this characterization, but if not the most, certainly one of the most. And even so, this problem with leap seconds managed to escape into released kernels. If that happened, here, what hope is there for other, less well tested systems.

>

>


In my industry we have a timing protocol casually referred to as 
"timecode", the latest specification is called "ST 12". There's a 
reasonably good explanation of it at Wikipedia - 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMPTE_timecode.

The original designs of this predate the c and POSIX specs, tracing 
their heritage to IRIG timecode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIG_timecode.

In the early years of industry deployment it was pretty unreliable. It 
took years for venders, both hardware and software, to learn how to do 
it interoperablly. As things progressed, SMPTE revised and refined the 
specification and eventually everybody was on the same page. It was 
really 10 years before it all settled down, or "matured".

The implementation of UTC in computers spans many standards bodies 
across many disciplines so its way more difficult in that respect. Its 
going to take a while.

I think the "kill Leap Seconds" call as an unfortunate diversion from 
concentrating efforts to clarify usage.

In my experience in standards bodies the conversation and resources are 
driven by venders who in turn are presumably responding to their 
customer's requests but too often the user's opinions get lost in 
translation.

The LEAP_SECS list seems populated mostly by computer "users" 
(sophisticated users), rather than "manufacturers" or "venders". As a 
group you all could probably have some influence.

-Brooks