[LEAPSECS] [time-nuts] Leap second to be introduced at midnight UTC December 31 this year

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 21 July 2016 at 23:49, Hal Murray <hmurray at megapathdsl.net> wrote:
> Has anybody done any serious thinking about fixing the POSIX problem?

My hope when I defined the Java time-scale [1] was that eventually the
OS would provide it, or something very similar.

The basic observation that I have had over many years is that beyond a
few experts, very few care about leap seconds. As such, forcing all
developers to know and code for them is both pointless and hopeless.
As such, my conclusion is that leap seconds should be effectively
hidden from most developers. While I know that many here object to
varying the length of the second, I believe it is by far the best
solution to hiding leap seconds.

The Java time-scale used an approach equivalent to UTC-SLS in the
absence of any other written down spec. The Java time-scale can be
changed if there becomes an alternative international standard for
smearing the leap second.

Given all this, I believe that providing a smeared time-scale in the
OS would be highly desirable (ie. one that always reports 86400
second-like units per day).

Stephen

[1] http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/time/Instant.html