[LEAPSECS] The POSIX Time Rationale - in the Working Group's own words

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Fri Dec 30 15:20:57 EST 2016


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In message <20161230104919472908.1bf7b59d at comcast.net>, Joseph Gwinn writes:

>It may prove useful to know why the POSIX Working Group (WG) excluded 
>leap seconds, in their own words.  

POSIX didn't "exclude leap seconds", they chose not to "add leap seconds".

I have personally asked Dennis Richie about this detail and his answer was:

"We set the clock when the system booted, from our wrist-watch, in many
cases watches without a second-hand."

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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