8 Feb 2014

Stop Google Calendar

Seventh post of my Stop Google series.

What is it?

Google Calendar is a Google service allowing users to store scheduled information (events, tasks, reminders…) through a web interface. Such calendars can be synchronized with other pieces of software as Google Calendar implements different protocols.

Alternatives

There is a nice standard (several standards working together in fact) for doing exactly the same and lots of implementations of it.

Data (events, tasks…) are following iCalendar standard, and network access is done with CalDAV, which is an extension of WebDAV that is an extension of HTTP.

As with any client-server system, you need at least two pieces of software: a server and a client. Here are some open source alternatives:

• Servers:
  • DAViCal (check my DAViCal installation tutorial)
  • Radicale (last time I checked it was quite new and too slow, should be much better now)
  • ownCloud which is in fact embedding another server: SabreDAV
• Web clients:
  • CalDavZAP (a full JavaScript client)
  • ownCloud
• Desktop clients:
  • Evolution (GNOME)
  • KOrganizer (KDE)
  • Lightning (Thunderbird extension)