In message <[email protected]>, Rob Seaman writes:
>>> Due diligence in system engineering should not be controversial. >> >> ... and it should come with a cost estimate. > >So let's see. (Putting aside the actual system requirements for the >moment.) > >The comparative costs and risks of UTC without leap seconds are unknown >relative to the status quo (UTC with leap seconds). But you forget an important fact Rob: In computing UTC doesn't have leap seconds presently. The majority of the code we know "to work" only works by ignoring leap-seconds. If we change the POSIX definition to have leap second, all that code will need to be reviewed and fixed. So if we are to do what you call "Good Systems Engineering", no matter what we decide, if keep leapseconds, if have them with much longer warning or if we abandon them, we will have to review all software which may be buggy with respect to whatever definition of leap seconds we choose. Before we can do that, we need to find it. So lets get started, we need to estimate how much time&money we need. So how much source code can you review for leap-second sensitivity in an hour ? Poul-Henning -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 [email protected] | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
