[Ietf-calsify] RE: [Ietf-caldav] comments on -02

[Cameron Stillion]

I respectfully disagree.  Leaving a standard "as open as possible" can
easily lead to such difficulties in interoperability as we have all
witnessed over the past several years.  The idea for calsify, I believe,
is to actually curb the open-ended nature of iCal in favor of the more
practical bottom line: something that works for a subset that we really
really care about.

This is not uncommon in software development, it's just that iCal is
long due for such a refocus and simplification.  It's not so much a
matter of Social Restrictions - it's just that the kinds of systems we
are creating have a general purpose to them, and it is centered around
creating calendars, sharing calendars, scheduling meetings, and other
simple day-to-day things.  Aligning stellar cartography hardware and
synchronizing atomic clocks are most definitely on the ragged outer edge
of our target.   

This is not to say we should paint ourselves into a corner in the most
fundamental ways, but it does mean we need to start small, get something
basic that we all can agree to, grow some real interoperability, and
THEN we can start tinkering with how to extend the standard to the
zillion other applications and possibilities.

As for your specific example -- "granularity", I can easily see a
property emerge in a future version of iCal that specified sub-15-minute
granularity.  This would not break clients who didn't care (most of
them, IMHO) and would be easily read and interpreted by those who did.  

Let's avoid getting wrapped around the axle of creating "the perfect
calendaring standard" - I'm just hoping we can get something simple that
kind of works without too much pain and suffering.


Cameron


-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-calsify-bounces at osafoundation.org
[mailto:ietf-calsify-bounces at osafoundation.org] On Behalf Of Lyndon
Nerenberg
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2004 9:57 PM
To: TimHare at comcast.net; ietf-caldav at osafoundation.org;
ietf-calsify at osafoundation.org
Subject: [Ietf-calsify] RE: [Ietf-caldav] comments on -02

--On 2004-10-6 10:25 PM -0400 TimHare at comcast.net wrote:

> my view is that we ought to establish a standard for the granularity 
> of a free/busy time map (15 minutes would be my choice)

I disagree with this. Calendaring is much more than just scheduling
meetings (with people). I can see using iCal and friends to schedule
runtime on computing clusters, or access to radio astronomy telescopes,
or many other resources where fine-grained access times are appropriate.
We should not be placing any form of social restrictions on the
protocols like this. They must be left as open ended as possible so as
to preclude us having to revisit the specifications in the near term
because we didn't anticipate a use for them.

--lyndon
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