[iRail] Community updates 11/2010

Thu Nov 25 08:13:08 UTC 2010

Hello there,

Will the VZW/ASBL only be focused on iRail? Because there was some talk about expanding to other means of public transport, and maybe even becoming an open data movement. Since we're doing the paperwork of creating an organization, would it make sense to take a broader scope from the start?

Also, is anyone going to the "Lift-off towards Open Government" conference? [ http://www.opengov2010.be/ ] The 15th and 16th of December Fedict (federal government) organizes this conference in Brussels, on the 14th Corve (Flemish government) does a pre-conference in Ghent, and on the 18th we have the i-Vlaanderen round-table (Flemish government, invite only) again. I could find no price info, so I assume the conferences are free? It will be a busy month!

Greetings,

Jan Fabry

On 24 Nov 2010, at 01:10, Pieter Colpaert wrote:

> 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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