Mozilla Calendar Project Blog Its about time for some news…

Our regular nightly build testers may already have noticed. If you haven’t here’s a heads-up for you.

Bug 481685 was just fixed. The aim of that bug was to align the nightly build directory structure on the mozilla.org ftp server of Thunderbird, Sunbird and Lightning. Here’s a n overview of the changes:

Sunbird

Lightning

Sorry for the long hiatus here in the blog. We haven’t forgotten you. Here are the 37 bugs that we fixed since the last status update in mid-April:

• Bug 238632: Dates become 1 day earlier after leap day in non-millenial century years
• Bug 258551: Alarm should not fire for cancelled event
• Bug 343268: Uncaught exception if Drag and Drop is aborted with Escape key
• Bug 388399: China holiday file by Mr. Fu Yang Yong – reloaded
• Bug 396819: Event Summary Dialog doesn’t show important information to user
• Bug 427617: ics import fails if event has RDATE property with value type PERIOD
• Bug 450933: Today Pane doesn’t remember state between restarts
• Bug 455939: Offline cache should synchronize in the background (hang every 4 minutes)
• Bug 459352: No progress bar in ‘% complete’ column
• Bug 466535: Sunbird/Lightning should get RTL compatible theme
• Bug 470934: Better handling of server-side deleted calendars when getting the ctag
• Bug 479973: Agenda List Box Item in Today Pane is always white
• Bug 482460: Recurrence summary in Edit Event dialog can’t be correctly translated
• Bug 483189: Armenia Holidays
• Bug 484877: Update internal timezone database to version 2009f
• Bug 486186: Reminder based on end/due date changes to start date after restart
• Bug 486678: Calendar summary dialog is borked
• Bug 487008: Wrong rendering of event invitation
• Bug 487400: Preference ‘calendar.alarms.indicator.show’ doesn’t work anymore.
• Bug 488720: Recurrence dialog doesn’t work well when editing an event with monthly rule
• Bug 489590: Make views more extensible
• Bug 489966: Bogus registry keys added
• Bug 490240: reference to undefined property this.mData[aName]
• Bug 490243: reference to undefined property this.mExceptionMap
• Bug 490309: Implement asynchronous ical parsing
• Bug 490526: Win2k3 c-c sunbird l10n is orange
• Bug 491051: Holiday Calendar for Guyana
• Bug 491207: Icon files for event/task dialog windows
• Bug 491226: reference to undefined property unifinderObserver.prototype
• Bug 491270: Holiday file for Iceland
• Bug 492192: Opening local ics files breaks views
• Bug 492640: Fix misc js warnings
• Bug 493250: Greek Holidays file (1978-2045)
• Bug 493812: Some css file have selectors related to classesrules that don’t exist
• Bug 493998: Attendee in iTIP REQUEST always have role REQ-PARTICIPANT
• Bug 494312: Remove the locale from updater.ini
• Bug 494476: In month/multiweek views, event boxes are misplaced by 1px

As always, our thanks go to all developers, contributors, localizers, testers, and supporters that have made this possible.

One month ago, I reported that the Calendar Project is now finally able to accept donations through the community giving program of the Mozilla Foundation. So I guess it’s time to reveal how we have done so far.

I currently have only received the numbers for the last two weeks of March (we started accepting donations on March 16 2009) and those numbers look quite promising. In the first five days after the initial announcement people donated $698.05 to Calendar using PayPal. For the remaining 10 days of March we took in another $437.05 bringing us to a total of $1135.10 for March through PayPal*.

We will now discuss internally on how to allocate this money in the most effective and efficient manner for the project. We will also be thinking hard about further fund raising possibilities.

Let me use this opportunity to thank everybody who has donated to the Calendar Project so far and to everyone who is planning on doing this in the future. I would also be interested in any ideas that you (our community) might have on how to raise our fund-raising capabilities.

* Please note that the total donation number should be higher than that since this doesn’t include any donations this month (April) or any check donations.

Sorry for the 7-week hiatus. I was quite busy personally and the project is busy as well. That doesn’t mean however, that Philipp and his crew aren’t fixing bugs anymore. To the contrary, a sizable chunk of bugs was squashed in the last seven weeks.

Here’s the total list:

• Bug 308538: Foreign X-Props in VALARMs are lost during roundtrip
• Bug 329570: Concurrent editing ICS calendars by multiple users can lose data
• Bug 353492: support multiple alarms per events/task and absolute alarms with fixed date/time
• Bug 363085: Not possible to enter a webdav share that requires SSLVerifyClient
• Bug 367469: ICS x-property should allow VALUE=type parameter
• Bug 389160: Editing color makes category list loose focus
• Bug 392572: Correct comments in calIDateTime.idl
• Bug 428538: Startup notice for calendars of uninstalled/removed providers
• Bug 447824: Fix caldav ticket-based authentication
• Bug 455515: Local calendar tasks are not shown when a remote CalDAV calendar is unavailable
• Bug 460252: Today Pane Integration in the new Thunderbird tab model
• Bug 463978: Details/Description textbox missing from create/edit event/task dialog
• Bug 464133: CalDAV deletes against Zimbra server often (always?) fail
• Bug 465019: Copy, cut, paste from context menu in calendar views do not work
• Bug 466979: Clicking on the “Today” button in the minimonth doesn’t refresh the calendar view
• Bug 468846: Recurring all day event -> duplicate event created
• Bug 471774: Update calendar copyright dates to 2009
• Bug 473366: Basque calendar
• Bug 474025: Changing a recurring/repeating event to non-recurring doesn’t work
• Bug 474552: Error: Assert failed: TypeError: logins[0].clone is not a function
• Bug 475715: Create a binding for the calendar list
• Bug 476132: Impossible to move event by drag&drop if another event is selected
• Bug 476234: a calendar that shows the Mexican Holidays 2009
• Bug 477248: Calendar hangs – Syntax error calProviderUtils.jsm (new XML(…))
• Bug 478612: Add ta-LK to calendar/all-locales
• Bug 479316: Task list and task view are empty [JavaScript Error]
• Bug 479614: faq.html: how to publish/serve calendars should mention CalDAV (& WCAP)
• Bug 480005: Estonian holiday calendar
• Bug 480383: Creating new profile fails, calendar list and views are empty
• Bug 480390: Include Lightning BuildID in install.rdf for easier QA work
• Bug 480702: Add ifdef MOZ_UPDATER for the app update preferences UI and Help menu
• Bug 480731: Calendar events showing reminder after scheduled event instead of before
• Bug 480930: Calendar List not sorted according to “calendar.list.sortOrder”
• Bug 480933: Events are shown transparent, calendar and category color is missing
• Bug 481428: Error parsing XML streamReferenceError: getTimezoneService is not defined
• Bug 481450: new XML() to cal.safeNewXML()
• Bug 481472: Add Vietnamese (vi) to Calendar all-locales list
• Bug 481499: Rename menu entry “Address Book Card” to “Address Book Contact”
• Bug 481825: No loading of CalDav Calendar due to errors regarding parsing eTags
• Bug 482001: Update the Iranian Holidays Calendar (in Persian and English)
• Bug 482108: “Invalid alarm for item” errors when reading alarms from older releases
• Bug 482116: Views are not updated after changing category color, restart required
• Bug 482149: Today pane splitter still showing when pane is hidden in certain cases
• Bug 482456: empty/blank status of calendar task
• Bug 482612: too small textbox for custom snooze time in reminder dialog
• Bug 482636: /usr/lib/sunbird Directory Requires World-writable Permissions
• Bug 482864: Build does not generate chrome.manifest files for extensions
• Bug 484160: Migration wizard starts with very small width/height.
• Bug 484871: Sunbird and Lightning homepage content messed up
• Bug 485570: absolute alarm with fixed date/time is reset to relative alarm
• Bug 485571: absolute alarm with fixed date/time is lost after application restart
• Bug 486676: Unnecessary alarm load on startup for all subscribed calendars
• Bug 486709: Display of date/time of absolute reminder is confusing
• Bug 486789: JavaScript Error “exc is not defined” in calStorageCalendar.js

As always, our thanks go to all developers, contributors, localizers, testers, and supporters that have made this possible.

One of the most often made statements within the last few years from our users and supporters was that people would really like to support us by donating a few bucks to the Calendar Project.

That wasn’t possible until now. But thanks to the Mozilla Foundation and the efforts of its employees, particularly David Boswell, it’s now finally possible to support the Calendar Project by donating to our cause.

All the necessary details are on our donation web page. You can support us via:

• a one time donation online (using Paypal or a Credit Card)
• a recurring donation each month (using Paypal or a Credit Card)
• a personal check

If you are a regular user of our software, please consider donating to our cause.

Thanks in advance
The Calendar Project team

After all the bad news in the last few days, here are some good news at last: Our recent bugfixes. Everything considered, the last 28 days were pretty good in terms of the number of bugfixes. Hopefully we can keep this up as more people will step up and help us with bringing the Calendar Project forward.

Here’s the list of the 47 bugfixes in the last 28 days:

• Bug 345607: Copy recurring event and paste to another day appears to work but event is not saved
• Bug 357332: Holidays in Chile
• Bug 358217: Catalan holiday calendar
• Bug 379097: Export should default to ics
• Bug 405033: Remember last selected task when sorting list in Task mode
• Bug 421329: Freebusy information is not loaded for multiday events beginning previous to look-up date
• Bug 429126: Infinite loop at refresh when a calendar is deleted from the server outside of Lightning
• Bug 449567: ‘Dismiss all’ alarms of recurring events -> error console output
• Bug 457823: Mini-month vs datepicker on calendar pane
• Bug 463273: Error: Failed to read ‘repeatDetailsOrdinal0’
• Bug 463679: Two email notifications sent for cached CalDAV calendar
• Bug 463960: Cannot refresh cached CalDAV calendars
• Bug 463961: Unnecessary fetch of all etags for cached calendars
• Bug 468723: Incorrect doModifyItem for CalDAV servers where the inbox matches the calendar uri
• Bug 469605: Incorrect handling of mBatchCount
• Bug 469767: Very slow etags parsing
• Bug 472314: Add some documentation to calendar code
• Bug 474361: Remove and rename calendar-decorated panes
• Bug 474630: Alarms don’t work for recurring events
• Bug 474632: Update internal timezone database to version 2009a
• Bug 475170: LDAP Lookup broken in Invite Attendees dialog
• Bug 475549: ICS file for Norwegian holidays 2009-2013
• Bug 475599: Create the backup files in calendar-data folder instead of the backupData folder
• Bug 475745: Updated English Holidays calendar
• Bug 475803: Cal.fromRFC3339 matches fails to set timezone correctly
• Bug 475887: ${BrandFullName} needs to be quoted in shared.nsh
• Bug 476219: Drag and drop of event works but MODIFICATION_FAILED dialog is shown
• Bug 476262: alarms don’t fire/show up/no reminder (alarmDate is not defined)
• Bug 476331: Replace InfoText with Info in updater.ini using sed in locales Makefile.in
• Bug 476518: Sunbird debug symbols for crash reports seem to be missing
• Bug 476867: Download links for Sunbird 0.7 and older releases do not work
• Bug 477009: Unable to get directory path for directories immediately under some symlinks
• Bug 477064: Recurrence description for weekly event uses repeatDetailsOrdinal* where should be weekday
• Bug 477207: Remove installer code that adds unused registry key values
• Bug 477445: What is this “orientation” of which you speak?
• Bug 477474: Remove searchplugins occurrences from locales/Makefile.in
• Bug 477664: No vertical space between label and underline indicating accesskey
• Bug 479327: On startup, icon in statusbar shows offline mode
• Bug 479513: task description box vanishes when dragging scrollbar in task list
• Bug 479577: Creating event/task with alarm on end/due date throws exception NS_ERROR_OBJECT_IS_IMMUTABLE
• Bug 479578: Creating task with alarm doesn’t automatically enable the required start or due date anymore
• Bug 479599: Bugs.html: request review from module owner
• Bug 479605: FAQ: local file steps are out of date
• Bug 479606: FAQ: how to tinker: change “cvs” to comm-central
• Bug 479610: FAQ: netscape server -> sun server
• Bug 479695: Canceling Custom Reminder dialog trows error “customItem.reminders is undefined”
• Bug 479707: Error notification dialog: “Error number” should be “Error code”

Many thanks go to all developers, contributors, localizers, testers, and supporters that have made this possible.

There have been a lot of questions asked since our announcement, that we’re discontinuing Sunbird, because several main contributors can no longer work full-time on the project. I want to use this post to try to answer as many questions as I can.

• Various people have asked for the Mozilla Foundation or Mozilla Messaging to step in and help us out.
  Short answer: They already are helping us out.
  Long answer: Mozilla Messaging is already helping us out on the build engineering side and the Mozilla Foundation is actively working with us to make it possible for people to donate to the Calendar Project via the Mozilla Foundation.
• Raffael asked: “How close are you working together with Spicebird? Are there other projects like Spicebird that could contribute code to Lightning?
  We are working together with the Spicebird people. Their calendar code is mostly based on our code. We are also working closely together with the folks from SoGo.
• Sunbirduser said: “The most important question is not whether sunbird or lightning will be stopped, but how to get new interesting people into the project and how to get more developers. This is the work of the project leader!
  Like Philipp said in his original announcement

  Our next release will include Sunbird, but subsequent releases won’t unless new contributors take on the work.

  and

  This is really a tremendous opportunity for anyone who is interested and willing to help make a difference here for the project and its hundreds of thousands of users — get involved!

  Things will happen if someone actually steps up and makes them happen. That is how it works in the open source space. Philipp is very important as the project’s lead developer, but he’s not anyone’s boss and can’t command anyone to do something. Interested people will need to step up and do something, then Sunbird can live on.

I hope this answers most questions. Let me know if you have more.

Our announcement that we’re very short on actual developers has already raised quite a stir. I want to give some feedback to some of the questions that were already raised and also elaborate a little more on the situation that we’re in.
First the feedback part:

• Cantalou asked: In your opinion, did you get so far enough support from Mozilla Messaging?
  Yes. Absolutely.
• Various users suggested that we should dump Lightning in favor of Sunbird
  That would be worse than what we’re doing right now. Looking at the download numbers, Lightning is about twice as popular than Sunbird nowadays, so dumping Lightning would probably turn away many more people than dumping Sunbird. In addition Lightning, due to its integrated nature, has many features that Sunbird currently lacks, which would need to be re-implemented in Sunbird to make it a viable option (e.g. addressbook integration, LDAP integration, ability to send and receive mails).
• jakyra asked: Could you make the next version of Lightning work on Ubuntu?
  Lightning already works fine on Ubuntu. The problem is that Lightning needs some system libraries that aren’t installed by default on Ubuntu. Our system requirements page lists the necessary requirements. If you make sure everything is in place *before* installing Lightning, everything should work fine.
• neandr asked: Can Lightning 1.x be installed ontop of Firefox/Thunderbird/XULrunner?
  It would certainly be possible to develop Lightning in such a way, that it would be easily installable into Firefox, Thunderbird or every other XULrunner-based application. However, we do not think that this would be an effective use of our development time. That being said, if you (neandr) or someone else is interested in making this happen, you’re more than welcome to do this!

Various users were forthcoming with ideas about feature additions. To answer this let me use a quote from Philipp’s blog post yesterday:

This is really a tremendous opportunity for anyone who is interested and willing to help make a difference here for the project and its hundreds of thousands of users — get involved!

The bottom line is: With no full-time developers on board and only a handful of part-time contributors, there’s no way that we’re going to implement stuff like Exchange support, improved task management, device synchronization, far-reaching performance improvements, etc. in the foreseeable future.

This can only happen, if you make it happen. New features do not materialize out of thin air, they appear because someone is willing and committed enough to invest time and effort to make something happen. Or to use a famous (and slightly adjusted) quote from JFK: “Ask not what the Calendar project can do for you, ask what you can do for the Calendar project!”

So get in touch, either on IRC (#calendar channel on irc.mozilla.org), our developer newsgroup (mozilla.dev.apps.calendar) or via an e-mail to Philipp or me (our mail addresses can be found on our team page).

I hope to hear from you soon
Simon