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+title: 'Synchronization sucks!'
+categories:
+  - computer
+date: "2011-04-14 12:08:01"
+tags:
+---
+
+One of my biggest pet-peeves in the free software world hit me again.
+Whenever I asked my friends what are their biggest blockers against
+switching to Linux, I get two questions. The first one is "Will my Word
+documents work? Will I get something equivalent to MS Office?" And I am
+happy to say that I can point to `Libre/OpenOffice`_ and with a kind
+help_ from our friends in Redmont, I usually can persuade them that we
+have a good alternative here.
+
+.. _`Libre/OpenOffice`:
+    http://www.documentfoundation.org/
+.. _help:
+    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29
+
+The second question is though "Will it synchronize calendar/addressbook
+with my cell phone?" and there I get always sad. Given the frequency
+this question comes up and up again, I am constantly surprised how
+little major Linux players do in this regard. The last time
+synchronization reliably worked for me was when I was using Psion PDA
+and {KDE,Gnome}-pilot. Not that there wouldn’t be enough trying
+(OpenSync_, SyncEvolution_ mentioned by Adam and many others), but none
+of them is really reliably allowing me to share my contacts, calendar,
+and TODO list between my N900, Thunderbird on desktop and my server
+(which runs `Zarafa 7.0beta3`_ currently).  Currently the only working
+solution for me is to use … ehm … ActiveSync_ from above mentioned
+friends on the west Coast of the United States. Yes, it is quite
+unreliable (especially with regards to emails) and it omits
+synchronization of contacts in Thundebird, but at least I have calendars
+more or less in sync.
+
+.. _OpenSync:
+    http://opensync.org/
+.. _SyncEvolution:
+    http://syncevolution.org/
+.. _`Zarafa 7.0beta3`:
+    http://www.zarafa.com/download-release
+.. _ActiveSync:
+    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activesync
+
+In relation to `the recent news`_ I have chatted on IRC with Ludovico_
+and we agreed that actually well working Lightning_ and `Address book`_
+synchronization/sharing is must for any serious deployment outside of
+hobbyist area.
+
+.. _`the recent news`:
+    http://blog.ascher.ca/2011/04/04/the-future-of-messaging/
+.. _Ludovico:
+    http://perso.hirlimann.net/~ludo/blog/
+.. _Lightning:
+    http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/
+.. _`Address book`:
+    https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Address_Book
+
+And now I am reading `Adam’s blogpost`_ on his suffering with the state
+of synchronization and I feel at least a bit of consolation that I am
+not alone with my pain. I cannot add much to his blogpost than couple of
+nits:
+
+.. _`Adam’s blogpost`:
+    http://www.happyassassin.net/2011/04/13/the-continuing-state-of-contact-calendar-synchronization-suck/
+
+-  I am not completely persuaded that synchronization is not the way to
+   go, or that the difference isn’t mostly lexical. At least git_ seems
+   to show that synchronization of two repositories is possible, and
+   synchronization of changes from cache to the central repository
+   doesn’t seem to be too different from synchronization.
+-  I am not sure how reliable the information is, but `some birdie`_
+   told me that the next version of Zarafa (after 7.0) should have the
+   official support for CardDAV_ (CalDAV_ is already supported) and
+   I really hope it will be so.
+
+.. _git:
+    http://git-scm.com/
+.. _`some birdie`:
+    irc://freenode/zarafa
+.. _CardDAV:
+    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CardDAV
+.. _CalDAV:
+    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalDAV
+
+I still hope that future is bright, but I really wish it was closer than
+it is.