This topic keeps coming up and I'm not sure I want to read all the comments just in case someone has written something that wasn't written last time it was discussed.
Personally, I would like to keep leap seconds. The only change I would make is to demand a longer notice period: 18 months instead of 6 months would be good. Presumably that would mean we'd have to tolerate a slightly bigger difference between UTC and UT1 but that seems all right.
It would be stupid and irresponsible to abolish leap seconds without deciding on and implementing an alternative way of keeping time, and therefore the calender, in phase with the cycle of daylight. There are alternatives (leap minutes, redefining the second, ...) but to me they all seem a lot worse than leap seconds.
Of course, whatever we do in the future, software will still have to handle leap seconds for processing timestamps in the past so any change to the system would mean that most software gets more complex.
Personally, I would like to keep leap seconds. The only change I would make is to demand a longer notice period: 18 months instead of 6 months would be good. Presumably that would mean we'd have to tolerate a slightly bigger difference between UTC and UT1 but that seems all right.
It would be stupid and irresponsible to abolish leap seconds without deciding on and implementing an alternative way of keeping time, and therefore the calender, in phase with the cycle of daylight. There are alternatives (leap minutes, redefining the second, ...) but to me they all seem a lot worse than leap seconds.
Of course, whatever we do in the future, software will still have to handle leap seconds for processing timestamps in the past so any change to the system would mean that most software gets more complex.