Brad Knowles discusses why it's important for a network to have the right time and why he has issues with OpenNTPd - an open-source alternative to traditional NTP daemons:
I've talked to the OpenNTPd developers about how they handle certain issues which we have recently encountered, and they seem to be violently opposed to using certain methods which are known to be more portable, in favour of using techniques which are specific to OpenBSD. Having a separate project which is responsible for adding back all the portability "goop" that was thrown out in the first place pretty much guarantees that the two code bases will quickly diverge quite dramatically, to the point where they are no longer recognizable as having started from the same place. ...Back to Compendium
Now, I've spoken with some of the OpenNTPd developers. Unfortunately, my understanding is that they feel that they are already basically done with the project and are now moving on to other tasks. When I pressed for more information, I got back the response "but it's just time". This indicates to me that perhaps they don't understand the fundamental nature of time sync and how vital it is to proper system operations and system security.
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