Ask Slashdot: Open Source Calendaring

buzz lightyear asks: "I'm trying to find out about developments in RFC2445 - Internet Calendaring and Scheduling...and RFC2447 - Internet Calendar Messaging. Can you tell me what the state of play is regarding these functions? eCommerce is starting to require such connectivity, irritating though that may be..and I want to find out where the developments are, if any. Needless to say some propriatary system will fill the gap if left open long enough."

Comments

Re: Calendaring and Scheduling work in the IETF

[Jeff Hodges]

There is definitely on-going work in the IETF (www.ietf.org) on Calendaring and scheduling. This page..

http://www.imc.org/ietf-calendar/

..is indeed the key resource. Closely following that is the "calsch" working group's "charter page"..

http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/calsch-charter .html

Before you run off and start doing any of your own things, I urge you to carefully review the current internet-drafts and RFCs produced by this group as well as review the working group's mailing list archive (which is available via the IMC-hosted page pointed-to above).

~Anyone~ is welcome to participate in the IETF. If you have ideas and cycles to contribute to this avenue, then you're definitely encouraged to get involved.

Note that by definition, IETF protocol standards are OPEN. Implementations are often open-source. For any protocol standard to progress beyond the "proposed standard" maturity level, there must be > 1 ~interoperable~ implementations. See this page..

http://www.KingsMountain.com/LDAPRoadmap/IETFSta ndardsProcess.html

..for info about "IETF Document Series and How Standing is Denoted".

If you've never participated in the IETF and are curious about how to get started, take a look at..

http://www.ietf.org/join.html
http://www.ietf.org/newcomer/index.htm
http://www.ietf.org/tao.html


Jeff
http://www.stanford.edu/~hodges/

Re:proprietary is WIN-ning

[IntlHarvester]

i just watched several thousand users get "migrated" from groupwise/novell to MS outlook, and it was an unhappy day for open systems and the future ISV's

I don't know how moving from groupwise to exchange could be constructed as a loss for "open systems". They both seem equally closed.

Despite the fine long tradition of Unix/Internet "open standard" mail, 90% of corporations have historically run on closed systems such as ccMail, MS Mail, and so on. As these people get moved to modern systems like Notes and Outlook is just one proprietary system over another.

Don't go and assume that all IT managers who pick these proprietary solutions are braindead or getting Microsoft payola. The simple facts are:(A) Users demand calendaring
(B) All decent Calendaring solutions are proprietary*
(C) The company is going to go with a proprietary mail and calendaring solution.

An open, low cost mail/calendar program would sweep the market here. I hope some of the products mentioned here get out the door.

* I believe that Nescape submitted it's calendar protocol to the ITEF for standards consideration, but it's banged around in committee for a couple years with Lotus and MS that who knows what's happened to it.

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