[LEAPSECS] Leap seconds decision deferred until 2015

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 19 January 2012 22:38, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:


> On Jan 19, 2012, at 10:57 AM, Stephen Colebourne wrote:

> > Consider it an opportunity to find consensus.

>

> That is unlikely if people believe it is axiomatic that time is

> fundamentally "time of day" and not "elapsed time."  These are two

> fundamentally opposing views of time.  And sadly they both agree to about a

> minute over the next 100 years, so the difference is small.  This

> difference will matter less and less if we become a space faring race, but

> the jury is still out on the viability of that.

>

> I also don't have much hope for things getting better unless people are

> willing to budge on other issues.  For example, we could not change a

> thing, but announce things 1 year in advance rather than 6 months in

> advance.  And if that goes well, we could push that to 2 or more years.

>

> If we relax the DUT1 to 2s or 3s, then things could be announced even

> further in advance, which would ameliorate one of the operational

> difficulties of the current system.  History shows that DUT1 of 1s is an

> arbitrary limit.  Some folks wanted .1s, others .8s, some 2s.  There's

> nothing magical about DUT1 <= 1s fundamentally, so that axis of the problem

> should be explored (yes, I know it is a change, but not one so fundamental

> that it couldn't be phased in with proper studies before).

>

> So I'm not too optimistic since all the focus has been on 'let's just junk

> them entirely' with little middle ground explored.

>


So, why not explore it. Properly. On this list.

This list has key knowledge of the issues, yet has failed to focus that
into specific alternate proposals that I have seen. I would encourage list
members to work out some more formal alternatives and post them in a
suitable thread. It would be far better for the next working group to be
able to be sent 2 or 3 more structured options between "do nothing" and
"kill entirely".

Stephen
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