May 5, 2020
1:58 a.m.
On 2020-05-04, at 18:26:22, Andrew Gierth wrote:
I mean that where the tzcode uses "GMT" as a default zone name or abbreviation in the absence of data, FreeBSD uses "UTC" (and has since 2004).
e.g. with no /etc/localtime file,
% env -u TZ date Tue 5 May 2020 00:00:37 UTC
(To the best of my knowledge there are no reference clocks available to which one could synchronize in order to use a mean solar time, so your argument seems to me to support this choice.)
Do you mean mean solar time at some arbitrary precise longitude or mean solar time at the Prime Meridian? If the latter, is interpolated UT1 a close enough approximation?: https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-services/ut1-ntp-t... -- gil