[iRail] Community updates 11/2010

Wed Nov 24 08:00:09 UTC 2010

Not many beer lovers, it seems ;) Good write-up though!

Concerning the wrappers (and clients which ship an API library, like
libirail in Qt): it might be interesting to create a feature matrix,
so it's easy for devs and users to spot what is missing and how usable
the wrapper/library already is.

Tim

2010/11/24 Pieter Colpaert <pieter.colpaert at gmail.com>:
> Hi iRail-people!
>
> It's time for some community updates. Sit back and take a few minutes to
> read this. Community updates are only needed when a big team of people
> is working together on something huge. Yes... That's what we have
> become. But, I don't want to bore you with numbers, here come updates:
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> INDEX:
>
> A | FOR HUMANS
>
> 1. NPO (vzw/asbl)
> 2. Schedule
> 3. NMBS won't bother us anymore
> 4. Help testing our applications
>
> B | FOR DEVELOPERS
>
> 00. iRail API
> 01. Github
> 10. BeTrains
> 11. Wrappers
>
> (If you'd rather read the Community updates online:
> http://project.irail.be/cgi-bin/trac.fcgi/wiki/CU1110 )
>
> -------------------------------------
>
>
> A | FOR HUMANS
>
> 1. NPO (vzw/asbl)
>
> We are still starting a non-profit organization. Before we can start we
> need a to decide a lot of things. Here is what we have come up with, in
> a little interview
>
> ° What is the NPO for?
>
> The goal of the NPO is to support iRail so it can provide open transport
> data free from money or copyright issues. People who write clients upon
> the iRail API will be able to join the NPO for free. By doing that they
> become iRail themselves and thus have not to worry about any conflict
> with other corporations.
>
> ° Who will be leading the NPO?
>
> Yeri T, Christophe V and Pieter C
>
> ° The name?
>
> iRail.
>
> ° Is there any task still open?
>
> YES! Glad you ask! We need someone to take care of the finances. Any
> volunteer who'd like to do that?
>
> ° Will members have to pay?
>
> We will have 2 kind of members: Members who want to support or cause and
> pay a yearly fee (we agreed on 10€/month → 120€/year) and Members who
> contribute code. The latter don't pay a fee at all.
>
> ° Money honey?
>
> Spending: Not at this moment. We are a NPO and we do not intend to make
> money with the iRail API. Our goal is solely to make people use the data
> without anything standing in the way. We create a «free market» around
> this data. If you want to make a business around the iRail API, be our
> guest!
>
> Receiving: We do at this moment. We are a NPO and we intend to receive
> from people who care that this project stays alive and kicking. For
> instance, it's very important if your business runs on our API that our
> API stays alive. So keep us well fed with a voluntary percentage of your
> gain. We use the money to organize developer meetings, to fund ourselves
> (yes, this is becoming an expensive hobby...), to buy servers, to buy
> github services and last but not least, promotion!
>
>
> 2. Schedule
>
> I would like to share our schedule before we go into a small
> winter-sleep. (50% of our team are students and students got
> examinations)
>
> (note: this is a draft. It probably won't happen as drafted)
>
> Week of 22/11:
>
> * We're rewriting the mobile webclient (iRail.be). It will be using
> jsonp and will be detached from the API's code. It will be housed in a
> different git repository as well. Mathias Baert is doing an excellent
> job on the javascript right now. Mathias Beynens is going to do the html
> + css afterwards. (I have high expectations)
>
> * We will be pushing APIv1.0 (now on dev.api) to the api.iRail.be
> server.
>
> Week of 29/11:
>
> * Setting op blog.iRail.be and getting the word out - our community
> updates and recent news will appear in one central place.
>
> * As last week we got ourselves a great JSONP-wrapper, we will now focus
> on an application suggested by Christophe Petit-Jean. We will make a
> widget which will be shown on a TV screen to be put in offices. If
> afterwards we help Christophe setting this up he might do a generous
> donation to the NPO.
>
> * iGoogle widget release
>
> First half of December:
>
> * Testing phase of BeTrains for maemo, BeTrains alpha for bada and
> BeTrains for WP7.
>
> Second half of December
>
> * Release of BeTrains for WP7
> * Release of BeTrains for maemo
> * Release of BeTrains for bada
>
> * Meeting: what will we do in February?
> probably:
>  - FOSDEM!
>  - support for buses! (depends on Van Quickenborne)
>  - iPhone app
>  - Qr-code campaign (more later)
>  - Social features on webclient: Share this app
>  - Take a share in iRail: the more people you refer to BeTrains/iRail
> the more % share you get in the iRail buzz-iness.
>  - Delay-tracker: track delays and make a guess for the future.
>  - Train-load warning: It's not pleasant to take the train to Ghent on a
> Sunday evening. Nor when people return from Werchter.
>  - And much more!
>
> 3. NMBS won't bother us anymore
>
> but... They won't help us either. Peter Dedecker (www.peterdedecker.eu)
> asked a question about iRail in the parliament to Inge Vervotte. It was
> slightly positive: they won't use lawyers to bother us anymore. Our
> comments about this are expressed over here:
>
> http://bonsansnom.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/vervotte-beantwoordt-irail/
> (Dutch)
>
> The most important comment: Vervotte mentions that we should agree on
> some points with the NMBS before using the data. Our point is (still)
> that the NMBS does not own the data so they can't force us to accept
> certain conditions. We are however eager to talk to them about
> conditions at least if we knew what they were. We have never heard about
> one condition.
>
> 4. Help testing our applications!
>
> Do you have a smartphone? I bet we have a native client! For android and
> maemo you can get testing executables.
>
> Maemo: https://github.com/iRail/BeTrains.Qt/downloads
> Android: http://code.google.com/p/betrains/
>
> for other platforms you can compile from source and test it if you feel
> adventurous:
>
> iphone: http://code.google.com/p/betrainsiphone/
> Symbian: https://github.com/iRail/BeTrains.Qt/
> Windows phone 7:
> https://github.com/dieterdp/BeTrains-for-Windows-Phone-7
> bada: https://github.com/iRail/BeTrains.Bada
> iGoogle-widget: https://github.com/iRail/iRailForGoogle
> General widget: https://github.com/iRail/Web
>
>
>
>
> B | FOR DEVELOPERS
>
> 00. The iRail API
>
> For those who haven't noticed, the dev API has gained some functions:
>  * liveboards - These are the schedules that you can see when you enter
> a station. Now you can also use them in json/xml/jsonp!
>  * vehicle - With this function you can get information about 1 specific
> vehicle: where is it going, when will it arrive in which station, ...
>
> Changes/Additions in syntax:
>
>  * Now you can use id=BE.NMBS.123 for a station, instead of
> from/to/station=AALST
>  * Time is now fully iso 8601 compliant as seconds are added
>  * location="X Y" has changed into locationX="X" locationY="Y"
>
>
> ! These additions are currently only available in the dev.api.irail.be -
> They're almost ready for release. Take into account that you cannot use
> dev.api.irail.be for a stable release of your application since it might
> break often. For your stable release use the api.irail.be which will be
> updated soon.
>
>
> 01. The Github association
>
> We have a github association page from now on. Access it through
> http://github.com/iRail (doesn't that look nice?)
>
> This allows us to list all members working on a github repository. We
> can manage each user's right to commit on a certain branch. If you need
> more rights, just ping Yeri or Pieter.
>
> 10. BeTrains for X
>
> * We need help on BeTrains for iPhone. At this moment we cannot
> outbetter the iphone app bought by the NMBS. We have to be more stable,
> faster, user-friendlier, ... Do you know someone who can code objective
> C? Refer him to us!
>
> * Same for blackberry, except that we don't have any code yet. Do you
> want to code for blackberry? Do you know someone? Get in touch!
>
> 11. Wrappers
>
> Don't rewrite code that we have written already. We have quite some
> wrappers listed on the github project page.
>
> http://github.com/iRail/
>
>
>
> Thanks for reading this entirely. It takes a lot of courage to read such
> a great email. Therefor, the first one to mail me (personally) with "I
> need a beer" will get free beer on the next meet-up.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Pieter
>
>
>
>
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