Reverting R490:abfdd65f0c85: Use URLs in multiget requests as returned by the Server for Kolab users

[Volker Krause]

Hi Valorie,

On Monday, 14 October 2019 04:28:59 CEST Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> Hello PIMsters,
> 
> We (the CWG ) have gotten a very well-reasoned and outraged email from a
> passionate KDE and PIM user, who can no longer use their calendar because
> of:
> 
> [1] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=386985
> [2] https://phabricator.kde.org/D8843
> 
> Can you please either add back the reverted patch that fixed the problem
> for a multitude of users, or help Kolab fix their issue, or ?
> 
> It really is not OK to favor users of a particular Kolab server over many
> other users who do not use this server.
> 
> If there is more behind this, please explain it so we can clarify this to
> our users.

it is of course understandably frustrating when hit by this issue and thus 
having no access to ones calendar, I think everyone agrees that this should be 
fixed.

However, before jumping to conclusions, let's review what happened (looking at 
D8443):
- D8443 is proposed, reviewed and integrated in November 2017.
- Within a week a regression is discovered, namely it breaking access to some 
Kolab servers (because the people running master happen to use that, if that's 
actually the only affected server is actually unknown I think).
- Given the short timeframe to the 17.12 release and a lack of a fix or even a 
full analysis of the problem and its impact, the patch get reverted.
- Nothing happens for about a year
- In Nov 2018 discussion restarts about how to find out what is actually wrong 
here.
- Discussion stalls in Feb 27 with David providing a diagnostic patch, asking 
someone affected to apply that and provide the resulting output, which never 
happened.

It is also worth noting that this isn't a "a particular Kolab server" vs. 
"many other users", far from it. The current code works perfectly fine with 
many other servers out there, such as Nextcloud. In fact nobody I'm aware of 
in the PIM team even has access to an affected server, which is what makes it 
difficult to work on a patch.

D8443 ended with a patch to test for anyone who has access to an affected 
server so we can progress that. Not doing that and instead asking for a patch 
to be applied that breaks things for other users doesn't seem like an 
appropriate way forward to me.

Regards,
Volker
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