[LEAPSECS] Definition of Standard time - Brooks Harris

[Rob Seaman]

On Feb 16, 2014, at 4:30 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:


> In message <5300838B.8030503 at edlmax.com>, Brooks Harris writes:

> 

>> It seems the meaning of the term "Standard time" in common-use and in

>> POSIX is in conflict with the definitions in ISO 8601 and IEC 60050-111.

> 

> It seems to me that a term like "Standard time" is so vague and

> fuzzy that we should naturally expect people to use it carelessly

> and without any formal definition.


Universal Time brings clarity to the timescale underlying the idiosyncrasies of the standard timezone system.  Universal Time is the modern version of Greenwich Mean Time that flowed naturally from establishing the prime meridian that anchors the timezone system spatially as UT does temporally.

It seems a strange position for the precision timekeeping community to take, that Coordinated Universal Time should be replaced by perpetual ad hoc uncoordinated unstandardized local adjustments to a vague and fuzzy, careless and informal system that will have been deliberately unmoored from the solid common standards of both mean solar time and prime meridian.

Rob