[LEAPSECS] presentations from AAS Future of Time sessions

Joseph Gwinn joegwinn at comcast.net
Sun Jan 12 17:14:52 EST 2014


On Sun, 12 Jan 2014 15:42:57 -0500, Greg Hennessy wrote:

> On 01/12/2014 02:47 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

>> In message <52D20BEB.60709 at edlmax.com>, Brooks Harris writes:

>>

>>

>>> Yes, in my opinion its unfortunate they chose to use the term "UTC" in

>>> that context.

>>

>> They chose UTC because they meant UTC.

>>

>> I have this directly from multiple persons who were involved back

>> then, including Dennis Ritchie who gave me the full sordid details

>> about the early UNIX' requirement of weekly recompiles to update

>> the epoch of the timekeeping.

>

>

> If they chose UTC because they meant UTC, then why do the

> man pages refer not to UTC, but to GMT?

>

> http://cm.bell-labs.com/7thEdMan/vol1/man2.bun

>

> It sounds like you are rewriting history.


No, he isn't. In the UNIX before POSIX, it was GMT. When the first
POSIX standard was developed, GMT had been deprecated in favor of UTC,
so POSIX changed to UTC.

Joe Gwinn


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