Perhaps I don't fully understand the reasoning that went into these things when they were decided, but I think the following would be more sane:
- Hardware clocks track Terrestrial Time, and TT is used for timestamps and all timekeeping that doesn't care about where exactly on the planet you are
- Leap seconds are treated as part of the timezone data. UTC is treated as just another timezone, with the appropriate leap second offset given by the timezone data for that date and time
- NTP keeps hardware clocks synchronized to TT and also carries updates to timezone data (including leap seconds)
This doesn't solve the problem of hardware clocks jumping backwards or forwards in time - hardware clocks can drift or be misset etc. and be updated - but I can't help but thinking that much of the pain around time and timezones is caused by basing our timekeeping on UTC rather than TT.
- Hardware clocks track Terrestrial Time, and TT is used for timestamps and all timekeeping that doesn't care about where exactly on the planet you are
- Leap seconds are treated as part of the timezone data. UTC is treated as just another timezone, with the appropriate leap second offset given by the timezone data for that date and time
- NTP keeps hardware clocks synchronized to TT and also carries updates to timezone data (including leap seconds)
This doesn't solve the problem of hardware clocks jumping backwards or forwards in time - hardware clocks can drift or be misset etc. and be updated - but I can't help but thinking that much of the pain around time and timezones is caused by basing our timekeeping on UTC rather than TT.