Does anyone know why there's no desire to see a working standard (protocol) for calendar/tasks?
It's clear that CalDAV doesn't function consistently across devices (and does seem to be dying as a standard). If you work across different devices/OS it's virtually impossible to get things set up seamlessly. Companies and developers of task apps seem happy to create silos and not look at interoperability.
If you want to self-host, it's too hard to do this and you really are limited to a tiny number of options.
Google etesync. It has everything you need and light weight and written in modern languages, python. It even supports e2e encryption and open source hosting option. You are welcome.