how are gmt and utc any different /genq

@kemona_halftau i don't think they are, it's just that gmt is winter time (utc+0) and bst is summer time (utc+1) for the uk?

@kemona_halftau utc is based on atomic clocks and gmt is based on something else iirc

@kemona_halftau not really different

@kemona_halftau gmt was the standard time at some point (before 1925)
nowadays its just another timezone, so it could technically be different from utc, e.g. if they had summertime there

@kemona_halftau I know someone on IRC that insists that they're different, but I didn't really understand their explanation of why.

@kemona_halftau in practice they are certainly often used synonymously but I'm not sure whether that is actually correct or not

@kemona_halftau UTC is the base time used for offsets, and GMT is the historical name for the (mostly) same time base prior to UTC's standardization.

GMT is often incorrectly used to refer to Western European Time which is the actual time zone used by Britain and Ireland and Portugal (and objectively should be used by Spain but Franco wanted to be on the same time zone as Nazi Germany), and just so happens to be UTC+0 (except for daylight savings where they use WEST/UTC+1, which is why WET is a distinct time zone from the abstract UTC)