Where are the iCalendar Servers?

abeowitz asks: "It seems like most of our calendar clients support iCalendar, like Evolution, but I can't find a working iCalendar server anywhere. OpenFlock appears to be in the conceptual stage and Star Office Scheduling Server has gone away with 6.0. Will Ximian or Samsung make iCalendar servers? What's available now?"

iplanet

[VA Software]

http://store.sun.com/catalog/doc/BrowsePage.jhtml? cid=64478

Exchange

[VA Software]

MS Exchange [microsoft.com] supports icalendar.

Did you even try searching for "icalendar server" on google?

libical

[pete-classic]

Maybe ask on the libical [softwarestudio.org] list?

-Peter

libical

[_typo]

Someone pointed the libical project. They have the start of a server at:

www.softwarestudio.org/projects/FreeAssociation/CS / [softwarestudio.org]

Quoting from the webpage: The CS is a calendar server. It holds a users calendar data and allows users to add, remove, modify and search for calendar entries. This project is just getting restarted, so see the road map [softwarestudio.org] for a basic architecture and goals of the project.

Say what?

[fm6]

All the leading commercial calendar servers support iCalendar. The one that comes to mind is the iPlanet server that used to belong to Netscape. The Evolution product page [ximian.com] mentions Exchange and Notes -- two choices I find very curious from an Open Source company!

Jetspeed [apache.org] has iCalendar support [apache.org], but apparently nobody's currently working on it.

Apparently Ximian thinks it's enough to make clients open-source and leave servers to the proprietary folks.

Re:Say what?

[hatless]

Damn straight, re: the ubiquity of commercial iCalendar servers. But as for knocking Ximian for not filliong the GPL iCalendar server gap:

Apparently Ximian is trying to focus on one thing at a time. Right now it's the notion of a Linux/Unix desktop that can work in current Windows/Mac environments, which means a desktop interface and essential apps like groupware, spreadsheets and so forth.

After that reaches a certain level of quality (GNOME 2.0 and perhaps a second major release of Evolution), their next announced project is an implementation of .NET, which besides being a server technology also happens to be a technology key to ongoing desktop interoperability in heterogeneous environments.

Ximian isn't in the server software business. Granted, I could make some snarky comments about their interface design chops, but I won't knock them for having a focus.

Re:Say what?

[fm6]

as for knocking Ximian

You're reading too much into my remarks. I simply pointed out that OSS developers, including Ximian, seem to be more interested in iCalendar clients than servers. That's a plain fact that only has moral implications if you assume I have an agenda. Perhaps you're assuming I'm an "OSS Must Prevail" true believer. Not so. Open Source has done some Good Things, but I don't see it becoming univeral.

I myself work for a company that sells closed-source products for various platforms, including Linux. On the one hand, my job probably wouldn't exist if it were for the growth of Linux. On the other hand, there's just no sane business model for my company that doesn't include licensing fees. So I'm in no position to be doctrinaire either way!

Domino, et al.

[fm6]

There's Domino [notes.net]. Terribly bloated product though -- started out as the server component in Lotus Notes. Learning to administer it is a major hassle.

What's your goal here? Are you totally unable to consider a non-Linux server, or do you just want to avoid maintaining an extra OS? If the latter, Domino is not a good trade-off. You'd be better off getting an old Sun box -- easier to learn the differences between Solaris and Linux than to learn all the weird groupware features of Domino.

You might also check out Bynari [bynari.net]

It is interesting that there's there little commercial activity in this area. A Google search reveals a lot of people working on standards, etc. But the serious commercial products are iPlanet (Solaris and NT, and when they get divorced from Netscape, I bet they drop NT) Exchange (NT only of course) and Domino.

On the one hand, you lucked out because IBM is heavily into Linux these days. On the other hand, IBM couldn't just write their communication/scheduling servers from scratch. Instead they had to salvage all the money they wasted on Notes by turning its server into a general purpose monster.