From the docs, "It is strictly recommended for personal, non-production use."
Wow what a 180 from just a year ago when their blog said, "For companies that handle sensitive information, deploying open-source scheduling software on-premises can offer an extra layer of security. Unlike cloud services controlled by external vendors, on-prem installations let teams maintain full ownership of their infrastructure. " ¹
I just cannot trust a company that does a bait and switch like this.
I think this is less a bait and switch and more just a legal liability shield. They're not saying you 'cant' use it that way. They just don't recommend you do, and they won't support you at all for doing so. Which I think is completely fair. Also, these two things aren't in contradiction. Deploying on prem does offer more security, but then it's up to you to use it correctly.
I just installed calrs, a recent alternative to cal.diy. It absolutely rocks! The only downside is that it requires me to activate STARTTLS as force-TLS-SMTP isn't supported (I had to check the source code). It’s young, very promising, and honestly, I don't know what I could ask for more.
I also replaced Radical with rustical, and I gained free push updates.
Can someone who's looked at the security of these systems give a bit more context on that?
The thing that's always concerned me with them is questions of "what level of access is required to the system(s) actually hosting my calendar data?" and "if this vendor is compromised, what level of access might an attacker in control of the vendor systems have?" Obviously this will vary by what kind of access controls backends have (e.g. M365, Google Workspace, assorted CRM systems, smaller cloud providers, self-hosted providers, etc.).
Edit: basically, with a lot of these systems, what's expected to be the authoritative data provider/storage?
Wait, I didn't even realize Cal.diy is owned by Cal.com. It seems like they're trying to get ahead of the open source community forking by doing this themselves
I'm unpersuaded by the assertion that closing the source is an effective security bulwark.
From that page:
> Today, AI can be pointed at an open source codebase and systematically scan it for vulnerabilities.
Yeah, and AI can also be pointed at closed source as soon as that source leaks. The threat has increased for both open and closed source in roughly the same amount.
In fact, open source benefits from white hat scanning for vulnerabilities, while closed source does not. So when there's a vuln in open source, there will likely be a shorter window between when it is known by attackers and when authors are alerted.
The HN discussion on the announcement is just 90% posts of the theme "if a student can brute force your FOSS for $100, they can do you proprietary code for $200" and "if it's that cheap to find exploits, why don't you just do it yourself before pushing the code to prod?"
I believe that the reason the chose to close the source is just security theater to demonstrate to investors and clients. "Look at all these FOSS projects getting pwned, that's why you can trust us, because we're not FOSS". There is, of course, probably a negative correlation between closing source and security. I'd argue that the most secure operating systems, used in fintech, health, government, etc, got to be so secure specifically by allowing tens or hundreds of thousands of people to poke at their code and then allowing thousands or tens of thousands of people to fix said vulns pro bono.
I'd be interested to see an estimation of the financial value of the volunteer work on say the linux or various bsd kernels. Imagine the cost of PAYING to produce the modern linux kernel. Millions and possibly billions of dollars just assuming average SWE compensation rates, I'd wager.
Too bad cal.com is too short sighted to appreciate volunteers.
If you believe they really did it for security, I have a very nice bridge to sell you for an extremely low price ...
Look, tech companies lie all the time to make their bad decisions sound less bad. Simple example: almost every "AI made us more efficient" announcement is really just a company making (unpopular) layoffs, but trying to brand them as being part of an "efficiency effort".
I'd bet $100 this company just wants to go closed source for business reasons, and (just like with the layoffs masquerading as "AI efficiency") AI is being used as the scapegoat.
From the docs, "It is strictly recommended for personal, non-production use."
Wow what a 180 from just a year ago when their blog said, "For companies that handle sensitive information, deploying open-source scheduling software on-premises can offer an extra layer of security. Unlike cloud services controlled by external vendors, on-prem installations let teams maintain full ownership of their infrastructure. " ¹
I just cannot trust a company that does a bait and switch like this.
¹ https://cal.com/blog/open-source-scheduling-empower-your-tea...
I think this is less a bait and switch and more just a legal liability shield. They're not saying you 'cant' use it that way. They just don't recommend you do, and they won't support you at all for doing so. Which I think is completely fair. Also, these two things aren't in contradiction. Deploying on prem does offer more security, but then it's up to you to use it correctly.
This actually makes me wonder if cal.com has had a security breach in their hosted offering that they are not disclosing.
It being open source also allows you to actually have a read of the software and guarantee things yourself, which is the harder better path anyway.
I still remember when they launched here. "Opensource Alternate to Calendly" was their post title.
What do you want, it’s hard to resist VC money and “the enterprise offering”
That's why I'm worried about Laravel taking on a huge sum.
I just installed calrs, a recent alternative to cal.diy. It absolutely rocks! The only downside is that it requires me to activate STARTTLS as force-TLS-SMTP isn't supported (I had to check the source code). It’s young, very promising, and honestly, I don't know what I could ask for more.
I also replaced Radical with rustical, and I gained free push updates.
https://cal.rs/ and https://github.com/lennart-k/rustical
And if you wanna try it out. https://cal.ache.one/u/ache
Can someone who's looked at the security of these systems give a bit more context on that?
The thing that's always concerned me with them is questions of "what level of access is required to the system(s) actually hosting my calendar data?" and "if this vendor is compromised, what level of access might an attacker in control of the vendor systems have?" Obviously this will vary by what kind of access controls backends have (e.g. M365, Google Workspace, assorted CRM systems, smaller cloud providers, self-hosted providers, etc.).
Edit: basically, with a lot of these systems, what's expected to be the authoritative data provider/storage?
Wait, I didn't even realize Cal.diy is owned by Cal.com. It seems like they're trying to get ahead of the open source community forking by doing this themselves
How curious. Are they trying to throw security shade on running open source? Very odd.
It’s curious what they said in the email they sent me about the OSS version.
------
A few important changes to note:
We will no longer provide public Docker images, so your team will need to build the image yourselves.
Please do not use Cal.diy — it’s not intended for enterprise use.
Cal.com has always had an open source community edition, I've been using it for some time. Is this just a rebrand of that line?
https://cal.com/blog/cal-com-goes-closed-source-why
I'm unpersuaded by the assertion that closing the source is an effective security bulwark.
From that page:
> Today, AI can be pointed at an open source codebase and systematically scan it for vulnerabilities.
Yeah, and AI can also be pointed at closed source as soon as that source leaks. The threat has increased for both open and closed source in roughly the same amount.
In fact, open source benefits from white hat scanning for vulnerabilities, while closed source does not. So when there's a vuln in open source, there will likely be a shorter window between when it is known by attackers and when authors are alerted.
The HN discussion on the announcement is just 90% posts of the theme "if a student can brute force your FOSS for $100, they can do you proprietary code for $200" and "if it's that cheap to find exploits, why don't you just do it yourself before pushing the code to prod?"
I believe that the reason the chose to close the source is just security theater to demonstrate to investors and clients. "Look at all these FOSS projects getting pwned, that's why you can trust us, because we're not FOSS". There is, of course, probably a negative correlation between closing source and security. I'd argue that the most secure operating systems, used in fintech, health, government, etc, got to be so secure specifically by allowing tens or hundreds of thousands of people to poke at their code and then allowing thousands or tens of thousands of people to fix said vulns pro bono.
I'd be interested to see an estimation of the financial value of the volunteer work on say the linux or various bsd kernels. Imagine the cost of PAYING to produce the modern linux kernel. Millions and possibly billions of dollars just assuming average SWE compensation rates, I'd wager.
Too bad cal.com is too short sighted to appreciate volunteers.
How are LLMs at reading assembly? I assumed they’d be able to read assembly about as well as any other language…
Is there such a thing as a closed source program anymore?
If you believe they really did it for security, I have a very nice bridge to sell you for an extremely low price ...
Look, tech companies lie all the time to make their bad decisions sound less bad. Simple example: almost every "AI made us more efficient" announcement is really just a company making (unpopular) layoffs, but trying to brand them as being part of an "efficiency effort".
I'd bet $100 this company just wants to go closed source for business reasons, and (just like with the layoffs masquerading as "AI efficiency") AI is being used as the scapegoat.
Who says I believe it? ;)
I'm just choosing to focus on the substance of the argument itself, which I think is risible regardless of who makes it and why.
are there notable open source forks or open source cal competitors that go for the "just keep it simple" vibe?
Thunderbird showed up in the last thread: https://github.com/thunderbird/appointment