[iRail] Community updates 11/2010

Wed Nov 24 13:20:53 UTC 2010

Hi List,

@Joris: I thinkboth ways should be available. I know some people who
are willing to become member already so don't worry :-)

Great idea @Tim ! I will add my Java wrapper too

Pieter

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Joris Timmerman
<joris.timmerman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> Thanks for the update!
> About the money thing, my thought on that is that I think people will easier
> give money via a donate button than a subscription/member fee.
> Just a thought. :)
> Cheers!
>
> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> iRail mailing list
>> iRail at list.irail.be
>> http://lists.rootspirit.com/mailman/listinfo/irail
>
>
>
> --
> Joris Timmerman
> joris.timmerman at gmail.com
>
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