Thanks, but no thanks

I have been tracking Calendar Swamp for a while now and ran across a comment this morning that according to Paul Thurrot the local calendar is dead.

In a way I agree, but essentially, as it stands today, I have an issue with Google (for example) owning my calendar. I fully agree that having my calendar confined to my PC is a pain, and really not very useful to me. I see the solution as having an alternative, if possible, and host my _own_ calendar online (On infrastructure that I own and on software that I control) I would love to say "Thanks, but no thanks" to all these targeted adds and hosted services. As far as planning my own life is concerned and hosting my email I would like to have full control.

Luckily there are positive developments in this direction.

1) Web Contracts (at least in some parts of the world) cannot be changed without notice. I like the idea that Google could not potentially change its terms of service or privacy policy behind my back.

2) Jimmy Wales (from Wikipedia fame) has kicked off Grub. I see this as a really exciting development. How wonderfull would it be to get high-quality search results without someone tracking your search habits, storing your private information and targeting adds at you all the time. Go Jimmy!

3) Open Source Groupware is maturing very nicely. The Kolab and Horde projects are converging slowly but surely and I hope to host all my calendar and email services, that I currently "outsource", myself soon. My email and calendar - hands off.