Subject: [ietf-calsify] ORGANIZER as an implicit ATTENDEE

From: Adam <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:28:44 -0800

The question of whether the ORGANIZER is an implicit ATTENDEE has come
up on this list before. For example, see

http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/ietf-calsify/2005-August/000742.html
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/ietf-calsify/2007-February/001575.html

 From the responses it appears that people believe that the ORGANIZER is
_not_ automatically an ATTENDEE.

However, reading RFC 5545 I see nothing explicit addressing this issue.
Furthermore, there is some language that suggests the *opposite*. In the
section titled "4.  iCalendar Object Examples" there is this text:

   The "Organizer" has scheduled the meeting with one or more
   calendar users in a group.

The ICS provided for this example does _not_ include an attendee for the
  organizer. The above language "...has scheduled the meeting WITH
one..." (emphasis added) clearly implies that the organizer is an
attendee of this meeting. (If the preposition in "...scheduled the
meeting with one..." is changed from "with" to "for" that would more
clearly indicate that the organizer is not attending the meeting.)

So, if the RFC wants to make its intentions clear on this question, it
should explicitly stat what meaning is intended.

This is not merely a theoretical question. There are large commercial
calendaring products currently on the market that make the assumption
that the organizer is always an attendee. So, a clarification of this
point would help with interoperability.

Adam Lewenburg
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From: "Robert Ransdell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:33:50 -0500

If the Assistant scheduled the meeting for the group as ORGANIZER.  The 
assistant is not necessarily going to the meeting, but he/she is still 
doing the scheduling.

From:   Adam <[email-masked]>
To:     [email-masked]
Date:   11/11/2009 03:29 PM
Subject:        [ietf-calsify] ORGANIZER as an implicit ATTENDEE
Sent by:        [email-masked]

Adam Lewenburg