[LEAPSECS] Changing the name of UTC

[Warner Losh]

On Oct 16, 2014, at 11:48 PM, Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.org> wrote:

> On Thu 2014-10-16T17:07:02 -0700, Warner Losh hath writ:
>> On Oct 16, 2014, at 3:39 PM, Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> wrote:
>>> Nothing would be renamed.  Nothing would be redefined.
>> 
>> Nothing would change.
> 
> I am not understanding the subtleties in that statement.  It seems to
> me that if the ITU-R were to adopt the conclusion from the 2003 Torino
> colloquium organized by WP7A, recommend that the radio broadcast time
> signals no longer include leap seconds, and also that the time scale
> in the broadcasts be named International Time, that would be a change.
> Indeed, it would be a change with a character that would be welcomed
> by the systems which do not handle leap seconds well.

I’m afraid that if there are two official time scales, both maintained,
and both propagated due to contract language, then the “new” one
without leap seconds would be this oddball thing that nobody actually
implements or that some people implement and others don’t and we’d
be left with a mess. Perhaps not the same mess we have today, but
a new, different mess.

Warner

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