[LEAPSECS] Leap seconds ain't broken

[Tom Van Baak]

> There are subtleties to timekeeping. Removing leap seconds wouldn’t remove the subtleties, rather it would promote them to significantly more importance, perhaps “breaking” even more software and systems.
> 
> Rob 

Now that several dominate vendors of computing are using smeared leap seconds, what problem will it cause that they are still calling it UTC? I suspect there will be platforms saying this is UTC and thinking it's UTC, when it really isn't. Do they provide an API to find out if you're getting the real, original, chunky UTC or the new, smooth, creamy version. The sysadmin may know because they configured the NTP server; but does the user or any apps know?

Ok, it's only a half second of error, over a day, once every few years. But that sort of bizarre exception is still a headache for testing. Moreover, now leap second QA tests will take 20 or 24 hours instead of 2 minutes.

That reminds me. I don't suppose we could get google, et al. to rename it UTX instead of UTC? And should the UTX label apply always, or just during the -12 to +12 hours around the leap? If the latter, it would make it very convenient to convert UTX timestamps to UTC timestamps and vise versa.

/tvb