Subject: RE: Proposal for VFREEBUSY in icalendar rfc 2445

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 09:26:48 -0400

Ian,

The free/busy answer has been designed for the purpose
of hiding ALL information. Remember, users need to be 
able to send the free/busy information without any 
hesitation. Many systems intend to allow automatic 
responses to VFREEBUSY requests, where the queried calendar 
will not have any control on the response to be sent.

Although what you are suggesting has value, allowing
intelligent choices for meeting, people are very careful 
about the information they send to others on the internet, 

I would suggest an other query, similar to the free/busy
request, calling it, calendar contents request, where
the rules about the information would be defined based
on the authentication of the user making the request
(i.e. S/MIME signature or otherwise)

Sending extra information, in my opinion, goes against
the basis of the free/busy. Just my opinion.

Andre

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Woollard [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 1999 10:25 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Proposal for VFREEBUSY in icalendar rfc 2445

I've been looking at the icalendar standard. The standard seems very
well thought out, but I'm deliberately poking in corners to
see what might be missed, and to see if I can understand it better.

There are 3 independent questions I have about freebusy:

1. priority- should the free busy include priority
2. quantity- should free busy specify quantity rather than
boolean free/busy
3. event- should free busy refer back to the event that
uses it up?

For example, when I schedule my time, I effectively schedule my time for
several months at a time, so that it would appear that I am 100%
occupied.

However, for many items moving the work aside is pretty easily done.
So it seems to me that the standard needs to have some way to describe
how
important a freebusy period is.

Another point is that it might be a good idea to specify how much
of a thing/person is used, not just a boolean in use/free. For example,
some people like to allocate 30% of their time to a particular
person. Or there may be a number of equivalent seats in a room
that can be allocated. Can free/busy be used to plan their use?

Finally, I think that the freebusy should be correlateable back to
the event that causes its usage...

So, perhaps fbvalue could be changed like:

fbvalue    = usageperiod *["," usageperiod]

usageperiod = ( ":UID=" uid ":" )
                       ; quantities value may be postitive or negative
                       ( ":QUANTITY=" integer ( "." integer))
                       ( ":" priority )
                       period

The addition of QUANTITY allows the specification of usage of
resources such as money, or other identical or equivalent items- if
quantity is not present this is equal to a quantity of 1. CUAs
that cannot handle other than unity quantities properly would
consider them to be busy if they were not totally free.

---

From: Ian Woollard <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 22:22:03 +0100

[email-masked] wrote:

> of hiding ALL information.

Not quite all.

> Remember, users need to be

Absolutely; in fact it's clear to me that free-busy
gives away too much information. Do I really
want somebody lurking on the internet to know that I
will busy ALL weekend? That I'm probably going to
be away from home?

The only way to go is different free-busies for different
purposes. It's going to need to be configurable for
each purpose.

I would expect that users will make different
free-busies say one for general use, one for
business use, one for recreational use, one for
private use... etc. etc.

> about the information they send to others on the internet,

Yes, and that was why I suggested making the new fields
optional (if I have the syntax correct!)

> (i.e. S/MIME signature or otherwise)

It's probably best to avoid duplicating information if at all
possible- why have two different definitions for exactly
the same thing?

> the basis of the free/busy. Just my opinion.

Free/busy is a means of communicating. We don't always
want or need a minimum communication level. We want
the RIGHT level of communication. Minimum service is
too much in an internet setting- most women will disable
free/busy in my opinion. Men may not. Bill Gates would
have to.

Do you want stalkers, cold callers, mother in laws, your
neightbours knowing your wife/SO is free at a certain
time?

On the other hand, you REALLY want to know when
your SO is free for that cosy little candelit supper...

We need control.