[LEAPSECS] Leap seconds ain't broken, but most implementations are broken

[Martin Burnicki]

Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Martin Burnicki <martin.burnicki at burnicki.net> wrote:
>  |Ask Bjørn Hansen wrote:
>  |> [1] As much as I dislike the leap seconds; smearing is only appropriate
>  |> if you specifically have chosen it so they␦re not supposed to be in the
>  |> pool.
>  |
>  |Agreed. Smearing in the way it is currently done by some Google servers
>  |(and ntpd, if configured accordingly) is just a hack to workaround
>  |problems with applications that are unable to account for leap seconds
>  |correctly, and should only be used in closed environments.
> 
> So if you do it only in closed environments over that full control
> is available then why should you have your clock off by multiple
> hours and not slew a single second, for example?

With "closed environments" I didn't mean that accurate time doesn't
matter and thus no time reference needs to be available.

I rather thought of let's say "closed time distribution", e.g. a company
which has its own time server(s) rather than using public servers, so
the admin can decide if their server(s) should smear a leap second, and
all the PCs and other nodes in the company network can synchronize to a
smearing or non-smearing server.

> It surely would have been much easier if CLOCK_TAI and the UTC
> offset would have been widely distributed and advocated for many
> years, and if the most portable standards would offer interfaces
> for them.  Since the problem as such doesn't seem to leave us,
> that is to say.

Agreed.

Martin