488317 - Incorrect time for calendar events across DST

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Calendar :: General, defect)

Description

[petrosig]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032609 Firefox/3.0.8 (.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Provider for Google Calendars 0.5.1 & Thunderbird version 2.0.0.21 (20090302)

I use Gmail Calendar to transfer calendar events from Outlook to Thunderbird. So Outlook --> Gmail Calendar --> Thunderbird. Getting in Outlook an invitation to an event which is a recurrent event spanning above a DST time change from Gmail Calendar, the time of the events are incorrect between Gmail Calendar and Thunderbird. This happens on the America/Phoenix time zone when receiving the event invitation from a time zone which does change DST (in my specific case was from Pacific time); as you may know, Arizona doesn't change DST. This means during winter time (no DST) Arizona time is on Mountain time, during summer time Arizona is on Pacific time.

I am using Windows XP SP3 version 2002. Installed the latest DST fix for this OS KB955839.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. I can email the original Outlook email invitation as test case to try the bug. I use Google Calendar sync 0.9.3.5 to sync Outlook and Gmail calendars, then Provider for Google Calendar 0.5.1 to sync between Google calendar and Thunderbird (using Lightning 0.9). Up to Gmail calendar the sync is OK (all the times are taking into account the time zone), in the last sync (from Gmail Calendar to Thunderbird) I got wrong times.

Another way to test the bug is to send an invitation in Pacific standard time for a recurrent event spanning across a DST change, accept it in Outlook, sync in Gmail Calendar and then sync in TB with all the three browsers set to Arizona time. The bug is consistent and happening all the times.
Actual Results:  
In fact, the original event was on Pacific time starting at 8:30a every Tuesday from January to May 2009. In Outlook and Gmail Calendar I correctly get 9:30a up to March 7th 2009 and 8:30a afterward (in Arizona time zone, the default in all my Calendars). In Thunderbird I get 8:30a up to March 7th 2009 and 9:30 afterward.

Expected Results:  
In TB I expect to have 9:30a up to March 7th, then 8:30a, similarly to Outlook and Gmail calendars

This is a bug which makes me impossible to trust most of my events in TB; that's why I marked severity as Major.

Comment 1

[Thomas Keller]

cc me

Comment 2

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Do you have your Lightning timezone set to the OS timezone?

Does this still happen with 1.0b1 and 0.6b1 ? I've recently added uri parameters to get the event in a specific timezone, this should make things work better.

If so, please enable calendar.debug.log and calendar.debug.log.verbose in the advanced config editor (Options > Advanced > General > Config Editor) and check your error console for messages.

Comment 3

[Thomas Keller]

Sorry, I haven't had the time to deal with this problem any further. I didn't notice any particular problem with the times of my existing (repeated) events during the last DST switch though.

Comment 4

[petrosig]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Sorry, I haven't had the time to deal with this problem any further. I didn't
> notice any particular problem with the times of my existing (repeated) events
> during the last DST switch though.

Thomas, in reply to your solicitation email about this posting, you find here below my answer:

"I am not used to check daily the Mozilla bug forum; sorry, I have to do other things in life. I did not receive any message on my email address until now about the bug I flagged.

Sincerely, I found quite hilarious somebody is contacting me after almost one year to follow up on my bug posting. Also, I found quite pretending the fact that somebody, after 11 months since my posting, is ringing me at my email address almost resentful I didn't reply to the Mozilla bug forum.

I expected a much quicker feedback (days?), at least to say: "it will take a while to address your issue, can we help to do something for you?". I concluded long time ago (roughly 10 months ago) Mozilla support is quite poor and unable to provide me a fix to my problem, which was quite serious for me, being the calendar used for my worldwide business appointments.

After two weeks since my posting I found a workaround to the problem. Hope in the future you guys will do WAY better than this.

Gianluca Petrosino"

Comment 5

[Thomas Keller]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > Sorry, I haven't had the time to deal with this problem any further. I didn't
> > notice any particular problem with the times of my existing (repeated) events
> > during the last DST switch though.
> 
> Thomas, in reply to your solicitation email about this posting, you find here
> below my answer:

It was not me asking you for a reply. I'm only on CC on this bug. I'm a normal user just like you.

I understand that it bugs you that they took a long time to seriously look into this particular bug, but on the other hand I've made quite a lot good experiences with the dev folks when I talked to them via IRC. Very helpful, very interested, very understanding.

And let me say something else, there are other community-driven projects and also commercial software out there where I couldn't even fulfill basic "product" support (typo3 or php anyone?)

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

:(  Gianluca  appears to be confused - Thomas did not send any solicitation.  And Gianluca's response doesn't illuminate whether the bug still exists for him, nor the "workaround".  Perhaps if this is WFM per Thomas, and Philipp can't reproduce then perhaps this can be closed?

Comment 7

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

I'm sorry our turnaround time is so long for some bugs. We unfortunately don't have too many people triaging bugs on bugzilla, this is done by the developers in the time they are not fixing bugs. Given the amount of bugs that are filed, its quite likely that one or the other will fall through the cracks. 

I'd appreciate if someone could take the time to answer my questions from comment 2. I'm going to close this bug as INCOMPLETE for now, please do reopen if you have further information. I do hope this bug has been fixed in the meanwhile but if it still exists and I have enough information to find out whats going wrong, its quite possible a fix will materialize.

Gianluca, just to explain further: If anyone adds a comment to this bug, then you get email since you reported this bug. It seems Thomas was having this problem too and he wanted to let us know that this is no longer the case for him.