[ntpwg] Bug: Status/Summary of slashdot leap-second crash on new years 2008-2009

[David Newall]

Linas Vepstas wrote:
> Currently, the Linux kernel keeps time in UTC. This means
> that it must take special actions to tick twice when a leap
> second comes by.

Except it doesn't have to tick twice.  Refer to
http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/1/7/78 in which I show that a time_t (what
time() returns) counts leap seconds (According to Bernstein this is what
UTC means), and using zoneinfo, the library processes leap seconds
correctly.

I just realised that the Notes in man 2 time are confusing and probably
unnecessary.  Suffice to say that (assuming correctly configured
zoneinfo) time() returns the number of seconds elapsed since start 1970.