[LEAPSECS] Definition of Standard time - Brooks Harris

[Steve Allen]

On Sun 2014-02-16T10:20:40 -0800, Brooks Harris hath writ:

> >These are questions better posed in the context of the tz mail list.

> Perhaps. But it revolves around UTC.


Yes and no, and there are significant cultural differences between the
folks on the tz mail list and the folks who drive issues in the ITU-R.

Even in the EU where there actually are international rules about
zone offsets and dates of change, the papers presented at the two
Future of UTC meetings show that there is no consistency about
whether the national-language versions of the EU directives intend
for the zone offsets to be from UTC or from GMT.

And in the tz mail list the philosophy is very powerfully that
tz does not prescribe anything, they only describe what people
actually do.  That was the way that the CCIR operated through
1963, too, but after that things changed.

In 1964 the IAU expressed concern about the lack of clarity of
concepts and produced a powerfully clear statement giving the
definitions and utility of various time scales.  See it at
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/note1964en.html

I find it ironic that they admit that the current scheme may
not ultimately be optimal, and that the new scheme of leap
seconds was deemed to be more optimal, yet utterly rejected
by POSIX and all the other computing standards bodies.

But starting the year before that there were as many as three
different meetings per year by different international bodies who
wanted to have some sayso over the time scale used in radio
broadcast time signals.

So coincdentally 1964 was the year that the term UTC was first used in
print, and that 1964 IAU statement was the last time that clarity of
concept was relevant.  After that the process was about control,
not clarity of concept.  At least at first there were apologies
expressed by the participants.  More recently it has been all
out turf war with no mention that the other side might have valid
points to be considered.

--
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