FreeBSD handles leapsecond correctly

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Mon Jan 2 14:27:40 PST 2006


In message <20060102221948.EBE475D09 at ptavv.es.net>, "Kevin Oberman" writes:

>Leap years are an artifact of a lousy calendar that has origins over 2
>millennia ago. Many calendars have been proposed which fix this, but
>calendar reform is simply not going to happen in our society, but leap
>years are a known, non-varying and trivially calculable issue. No magic
>and trivial to handle.

Interestingly, the main reason why calendar reform is a no-talk
issue seems to be that The Vatican owns the standardization area
of calendars because they have written all (relevant) standards for
the area in the past.

According to one insider, none of the possible owners of a new
calendar (ITU, ISO & BIPM) can bring it on themselves to ask the
pope permission to take over the area.   (ISO has documented
the current calendar, but go to some pains to make it clear
that they didn't come up with it.)

Considering that a merry band of brits are still fighting to get
compensation for the 15 days they "lost" last time Brittain changed
calendar, the political and legal fallout will probably galvanize
the current calendar until something really drastic happens.

Poul-Henning

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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