'Synchronization sucks!'
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:date: 2011-04-14T12:08:01
:category: computer
:tags: Openoffice, OwnCloud

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.