[LEAPSECS] presentations from AAS Future of Time sessions

[Michael Spacefalcon]

Joseph Gwinn <joegwinn at comcast.net> wrote:


> Well, yes, but I guess it's a bit of hair splitting.  The UNIX docs may 

> well still say GMT, but I bet what they really use is UTC, as that's 

> what's distributed.


Using UTC as a *realisation* of GMT is acceptable only for as long as
UTC remains a *good faith* approximation to GMT.

If a decision is made to redefine UTC in such a way that it ceases to
be a good faith approximation to GMT, then I will be legally required
by the laws of the Micronation of Falconia to stop using UTC the very
same day that decision is made.  It has nothing to do with any specific
numeric bound on DUT1, it has to do with the moral/legal concept of
*good faith*.  Even if it takes 20 years for UTC to diverge "too far"
from GMT after a deleterious redefinition decision is made, I will not
have a luxury of waiting 20 years before doing something about it: I
will have to make a complete disconnect from UTC (install firewall
rules blocking all major NTP servers that serve UTC, etc) *the very
same day* the deleterious decision is made, as that is the day when
UTC will legally stop being a good faith approximation to GMT.

Building and deploying an alternative non-UTC realisation of GMT will
surely be quite expensive, so lawsuits to recover those costs should
definitely be expected.  Mr. Poul-Henning Kamp will most certainly be
among the defendants.

VLR,
SF