A TimeSource is deliberately simple and inert: its only job is to fetch a candidate time from somewhere and return it as a TimeSample. It performs no licensing logic and makes no trust decisions. Whether a returned sample is believed, combined with others, or thrown away is decided by the licensing engine, not here.

Implementations

Typical implementations include:

• an NTP client that queries one or more time servers when the network allows it;
• an adapter that turns a connecting client's reported clock into a sample;
• an adapter for a trusted time delivered by the License Manager.

Contract

• sample() returns null when the source currently has nothing trustworthy to offer (e.g. the network is down, no client has reported in). Returning null is normal and expected, not an error.
• Implementations must not block for long. A source that needs to reach the network should do that work on its own schedule and have sample() return the most recent cached reading (or null) promptly.
• Implementations should be safe to call from more than one thread.

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