[tz] Google public NTP servers to 'smear' leap seconds.

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Fri Dec 2 17:39:38 UTC 2016


Brian Inglis wrote:
> Careful with systems that are subject to any audit, legal or
> regulatory requirements

As I understand it Google wants to smear leap seconds the same way major cloud 
providers do, the idea being to come to a working consensus that could 
eventually become standard and legal. In a sense, this implements McCarthy and 
Klepczynski's proposal to do away with leap seconds -- a proposal that crashed 
and burned in the ITU -- in a different and arguably better way.

I wonder who first proposed and implemented the 24-hour linear scheme that 
Google plans to switch to next time. It's not always that easy to change 
Google's collective mind. Was it someone at Akamai? Amazon? Microsoft?

Come to think of it, we should document leap smearing. Proposed patch attached.
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