At Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:40:58 +0100, Simba wrote: > I'm happily using SOGo for the last couple of years (great product, > btw!) but nowadays I'm starting to see Windows Phone users complaining > about the lack of means to sync with the server. > > The thing is that ActiveSync is kind of the only major sync protocol > that's supported on that platform. And the API to access > calendar/contact data is locked down—so, there probably won't be any > third-party app which could allow to achieve that any time soon.
The thing is that Microsoft deliberately created a phone that doesn't support the open standards the rest of the world is using, namely CalDAV and CardDAV. It only supports the proprietary protocol created and patented by Microsoft. Microsoft has succeeded through their market dominance with Exchange in forcing all mobile phone makers to include ActiveSync and extorting patent royalties out of them for that, but it doesn't have this market dominance with mobile phones to force that server-side. Google actually just announced that they are dropping support for ActiveSync for their free accounts. The question is whether Microsoft will keep sitting in its own walled garden and think that everybody that's using gmail will just switch to outlook.com or start implementing the open protocols that have been available for a pretty long time time now. I think (and hope) they simply have to implement CalDAV and CardDAV to stay relevant and in that case this problem would go away in the long term. > I know that there is sogosync and some other Z-Push forks but to be > honest, I don't think those will be production ready in the short term. > I at least always ran into so many problems (some of which are filed in > the sogosync tracker) that I'm tempted to surrender right now. Yes, the problem is the ActiveSync protocol isn't that simple and doesn't always map nicely to the open standards. I can't speak for Inverse or anyone else, but personally I think putting a lot of time/money into supporting ActiveSync isn't really worth it given the low market share of devices that are only capable of doing ActiveSync. In my opinion that time would be better spend on improving Outlook support, because Outlook does have a very high number of users. Kind regards, Jeroen Dekkers -- [email protected] https://inverse.ca/sogo/lists
