[iRail] NMBS Meeting

Wed Sep 29 08:28:48 UTC 2010

Hi Pieter

actually it seems the meeting went almost well.

Just to keep you guys informed : I'm starting the beTrains iphone
application development pretty soon. For the moment I've listed the features
I would have on the app.

   - The main focus will go on the "chat" feature (not sure we should call
   it chat actually > as this isn't real-time chat between people. But
   "messages" or "leaderboard" are boring names. Any alternative name ideas?)
   - In addition to that I'll implement the train hours search feature.
   - later I could implement the photo-contest feature.

Let's start off with something not too complicated and see if people use it
:)

Louis

>
> Dear list,
>>
>> Before we start, this is just a quick summary of what happened today.
>> This is not an official press release nor a statement, but it's a short
>> summary made in the evening for the few who are dying to know more:
>>
>> After listening to Michaël Vanloubbeeck on their Internet strategy, he
>> asked us straight away what we thought about their mobile web
>> application. There are three points we thought worth mentioning:
>>
>> 1. The number of clicks before you can see the right data is about 4
>> times too much. I only want to click once.
>>
>> 2. There is no autocompletion on the station names.
>>
>> 3. There is no button to switch destination and departure station
>>
>> On top of that we noted that for big phones like most android,
>> maemo/meego, bada and iphone phones, the site was too small. It was a
>> great mobile website optimized for small screens and fast connections.
>> We concluded that they, in comparison to iRail, have a totally different
>> focus. Both approaches are needed however and we need to cooperate on
>> this. The NMBS however responded that their mobile website is aimed to
>> target all phones and anyone, which we can't agree on. Discussion still
>> open.
>>
>> The second discussion is one that we started. We are still having
>> difficulties with Stibbe. Stibbe is a respected law firm in Belgium who
>> apparently has been hired by the NMBS to try to close us down. They're
>> quite aggressive in their approach by sending scary letters that our
>> lawyer (if you read this, thanks for your free support, we appreciate it
>> a lot!) seems to handle a lot better than we do. They didn't have a clue
>> about that however. They ensured us however that they will *try* to stop
>> these actions and let us work as we were doing. So the logical question
>> for us is: "Can we hereby officially use your data?"; Yet this seemed to
>> be more complicated as we thought. The real discussion had been started.
>>
>> The first problem was that for the legal aspect of this we were talking
>> to the wrong people. Personally we still think we are not doing anything
>> illegal and not one of their arguments makes that statement fall. As
>> they are going to stop their lawyers however, we're going to assume that
>> there is no-one left to sue us and this has encouraged us to crank up
>> our developing speed. The bad part about this legal story is that they
>> didn't guarantee us anything and we might get a reply about that matter
>> in quite some time.
>>
>> Their second problem was that the Internet and mobile devices are
>> changing all the time. And there are so many mobile devices they don't
>> know where to start developing. I didn't really get why they use this
>> against open data, but I guess it might be that they thought open is
>> just a fad like myspace which will disappear eventually. So this is
>> where I protested heavily and said open data would be a very good thing
>> to do: they would provide a standard API for the data and provide a
>> standard format. Everyone will be able to make their app for their phone
>> and their system. For free! Isn't that something you should be happy
>> with? No they said. They wanted to be able to delete all the
>> applications that didn't fit their standard. So I started talking about
>> free market where people who use a bad app will eventually use another
>> app. Discussion still open.
>>
>> Some other interesting points:
>>
>>  * They recognized that they were wrong by using lawyers in the first
>> place without mailing us. They could have filed a bug-report if
>> something did not meet their standards (which was a lot back then, we
>> agreed)
>>
>>  * They were already planning to provide their own API at *some point in
>> the future* with a little data in it, to be used under certain
>> conditions.
>>
>>  * They are not (yet) convinced open data is the future. "It's not
>> because we're a public company that our data should be public."
>>
>>  * Complaints about iRail that reach the nmbs will be, as good as
>> possible, forwarded to our mailinglist.
>>
>>  * They think iRail as external API provider is not an option. However,
>> they did not explicitly ask us to stop (nor did they recommend us to
>> continue). They'll "quality check" iRail and provide us with feedback
>> (probably just the mobile site, not our API)
>>
>>  * We asked if Nokia could sponsor iRail without being sued by NMBS.
>> That's a question we expect an answer on in October. They didn't
>> understand however why Nokia wouldn't come to NMBS for that instead.
>>
>>  * They have partners with whom they share data. Partners include MIVB,
>> De Lijn, Google, ...
>>
>>  * They *promised* they won't block our IP's (that's not something we
>> should be thankful for in fact. In our opinion it would be illegal for
>> them to do so)
>>
>> I would like to thank the NMBS for inviting us and I hope this will be
>> one of many meetings. We sure did have a lot of arguments but I think
>> that's a positive thing. We are not satisfied with the outcome of this
>> first meeting, but rumour has it that Rome wasn't built in a day as
>> well.
>>
>> Afterwards Yeri and I had a very good and inspiring chat. Keep informed
>> because very soon we will cover you with awesomeness! (we're serious
>> about this)
>>
>> Greetings,
>>
>> Pieter and Yeri
>> iRail.be
>>
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>>
>
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