[kosherhurricane]

I think this is the argument NTP makes for not including the offset. TAI can be just another "timezone", so that TZDATA should be to used it to derive it.

But that's backwards. A Stratum 1 NTP usually gets its data from GPS, which HAS the offset (GPS runs TAI). But it only outputs UTC, but not the offset, making other programs compute it from TZDATA. Why is NTP making user programs harder to get the data that IT ALREADY HAS? Because philosophically, NTP is married to UTC (even though NTP is mostly for computers!)

And providing this offset would basically get rid of a large body of people (like the TFA) who wants to CHANGE the definition of UTC, which is a more drastic proposal.

[Unklejoe]

> GPS runs TAI

GPS time is actually 19 seconds behind TAI at all times.