The CalDAV specification has been under development for a few years now, and at the same time I have seen increasing pressure from clients to provide a solution to their shared calendaring problems.
In evaluating the possibilities for shared calendaring, there are a number of possible approaches, but I have elected to follow the path of implementing CalDAV because I believe it is a good specification and that it will in due course gain client implementations and provide the richest user experience through those client implementations.
CalDAV is a client-server protocol specific to managing and reporting on collections of calendar resources.
As such, my intentions in developing this application are as follows:
I have chosen to write this in PHP because I believe that PHP is a widely available web scripting language.
I have chosen to use the Apache web server because it is also widely available. This is not necessarily a requirement, but I do not have other PHP environments available to me at this time.
I have chosen to use the PostgreSQL database, because it is a free, open-source database, which operates on a very wide set of operating environments, and which is fully ACID compliant.
I use the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, so at this stage I have made Debian packages available. If I find willing people I will make packages available in other forms.
This goal is not expected to be achieved in the first few releases.
In general RSCDS should not need significant maintenance to keep it operating.
Administrative functionality will be kept as simple as possible, within the target of supporting organisations of up to several hundred staff.
This is called a Store rather than a Server because the server-side smarts are intended to be minimised to support CalDAV only in a manner sufficient to inter-operate with clients, and with the focus primarily on the storage of calendar resources.
General administration of the system should be through a web-based application.
Calendars will not be made available in a web-based view in initial releases. It is unlikely that calendars will ever be maintainable through a web-based client, although the server should support the use of web-based client software which works using the CalDAV protocol.
The Really Simple CalDAV Store was conceived and written by Andrew McMillan.
If you are interested in helping, there are several areas where I need help at the moment: