Remember SOPA? Or PIPA? These are American bills which, thanks to huge protest from sites like Wikipedia, have not been incorporated in the American legislation. Had these bills been passed, it would have harmed the Internet to an extent that sites supposedly using copyrighted material could be taken down without any form of trial. As the current copyright laws are open for interpretation, this would mean that practically all sites could be taken down by big corporations which are too lazy to innovate their business model.

But SOPA/PIPA wasn’t that bad. At least not when compared with its European brother ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), that is. The central idea of this bill is to protect products from counterfeiting. However, this isn’t a clear concept: counterfeiting can be interpreted very broadly, ranging from trademark and copyright infringement, to patents and other restriction mechanisms. But ACTA also empowers customs officers to check your hard drive and USB sticks on copyrighted material when crossing borders. And of course, it also allows for “counterfeiting” sites to be taken down with minimal effort, closely resembling the late SOPA bill.

It’s especially that last thing that bothers iRail. A lot.

If ACTA would have been accepted by the Belgian government, the NMBS/SNCB would not have tried to stop iRail through a lawyer back in 2009. They would have filed a complaint and iRail would have been blocked straight away (without passing through court first). For good. And wouldn’t have stopped there: we might even have been arrested, just like the people from MegaUpload.

This is not promoting fair competition, neither is it improving the copyright holder’s situation. It is a war against democracy, open knowledge and the freedom of speech.

Tomorrow, the Polish government will be the first to sign ACTA. It’s time for us to wake up. Now.

Yours faithfully,
Pieter, Tim & Yeri
iRail npo

Today one of our finest members engineered a pragmatic and cheap manner to add iRail.be bookmarks on any wall you like.

Hannes is an engineering student. He is part of the iRail.be 3.0 team, a project that will be released in the autumn of 2012.

- Pieter

Thursday, November 24th Pieter and I hooked up to discuss the mediaplan that’s going to take iRail a step further to the creation of a visual identity. From now on you will be able to see the iRail Mediaplan taking form at this blog. To get an idea, I put together a little presentation. It’s still being revised by the entire board and we’re working hard to complete it, but I’m happy to introduce the start of the iRail Mediaplan!

About 6 weeks ago, a major FS crash occurred on one of the main servers of iRail. As this machine was quite old (7 years, an old P4), our host decided to decommission this server and replace it by a brand new Xeon server.

However, the process to transfer all data took a couple of days, and the IBBT was kind enough to provide us for hosting during this transition. This gave us the opportunity to run some load tests on their servers as well.

Not 3 weeks later, another problem occurred on another server. Xen (who was admittedly outdated, but could not be updated at that time) froze the entire server, and refused to restart its networking after resetting the device. I then decided to go for a clean install (upgrade to Xen 4.x and switch from Ubuntu to Debian). This outage affected minor services such as the blog. API was up during this time.

Long story short, it’s all back up now since yesterday evening. We’ll be checking out cloud solutions in the near future to prevent this issues from happening again.

There will be additional changes in the future (a dedicated VM for a few iRail services), but this is what it looks like now:

Aleph (dom0) proxies HTTP requests (using nginx) to 2 different VMs:

• dedicated BeLaws VM
• an Apache server running the api and iRail.be (and a few other iRail services such as Trac).

Four (dom0) hosts several VMs hosting services like liveboards and this blog.

In the near future we’ll add caching again (it’s disabled at this moment), but still will be managed by TheDataTank.

This is history:

We have made an incredible mistake.

The community of iRail has always been about being open and transparent. The board, Christophe, Yeri and Pieter, have never kept something from the mailing list and never has anything been left undiscussed on one of our meetings. This was true until June and I hope this post will help to understand our conformist actions which we now regret.

Let’s get to the point. We have been talking to the MIVB/STIB, the bus and subway company for Brussels, about using their data and doing some projects in parallel with our plans for building a mobile website, mobile games and info screens using data from De Lijn (which we can access thanks to @BartNelis). After all, MIVB/STIB was the first company to work to be integrated Google maps, and the first to have a real data sharing policy. We even seem like the ideal partner for this data sharing program: we’re a non-profit organisation and the slogan «let’s move together» could have been ours as well!

«Let’s move forward together» is exactly what we thought in February 2011. After an inspiring first official meeting of the NPO, we decided it was time to  include buses and trams in the iRail API. Everyone with a little knowledge of computer science can find a machine readable used by several sites of the MIVB/STIB. Therefore, with the same legal arguments as were used in the situation with SNCB/NMBS, we started coding, moving forward, working together on even more creative ideas concerning public transport information. But we thought, let’s inform the MIVB/STIB and maybe we should walk their line first in order to get even better apps, tools and toys.

maps.iRail.be in February - This screenshot shows live bus/tram information for Brussels. Blue dots are tweets about the MIVB/STIB

An e-mail

It started with one e-mail and a lot were about to follow. Slowly (we’re 7 months further now). This was our first mail:

Cher Monsieur,

J’ai reçu votre adresse courriel par eMich (Michaël Uyttersprot).

Je me présente. Je m’appelle Yeri Tiete et je travaille pour l’asbl iRail.

iRail livre des données de service des transports en commun (comme “De Lijn”, “TEC”, et “SNCB”) par le biais d’une interface standardisée (format XML & JSON), d’un site web mobile et d’une application pour smartphone (comme l’iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, Nokia, …).

En ce moment, nous ne fournissons que les données de la SNCB, mais nous sommes en communication avec De Lijn pour avoir accès à leurs données.

J’ai cru comprendre par Michaël que vous ne livrez pas encore d’ interface (API) ouverte à tout le monde: seriez-vous intéressés de collaborer avec nous? En effet, iRail aimerait livrer le plus d’informations possible au public et ce serait un grand plus d’ajouter MIVB à cette liste.

Voici notre site web:
http://irail.be
http://project.irail.be

After only 3 weeks we got this reply:

Cher Monsieur,

Après analyse de votre demande, nous devons malheureusement constater que votre demande ne réponds pas à aux conditions générales d’utilisation de notre service de data sharing.

En effet, nos conditions d’utilisation n’autorisent pas la sous-licence, ce qui est, selon toute évidence, l’objet de votre projet.

Pour plus d’informations, vous pouvez vous référer à notre site web: http://www.stib.be/data-sharing.html?l=fr.

Bien à vous

Wait a minute. We went to a lot of trouble with the NMBS/SNCB’s lawyers, explaining we were not infringing on any copyrights because there is no copyright on their data, it was in the newspapers, and all this just to hear that we have to start all over again? The data cannot be licensed to us because there is no copyright. There is a European directive which clearly states that these data should be released without any restrictions at all. After trying to inform the MIVB/STIB about this, this time in English, this was their response on the 7th of March:

Thank your for your mail and sorry for this late answer.

Unfortunately, I have to confirm my first answer. The description of the service that you give is covered by what we call ‘sub-licence’ because they intend to create a toll for developers and not a information service for the end-user.

At least they were apologizing for their late response, but again a very disappointing one. We just want to work together with our volunteers to get more people using public transport.

A little disappointed, we started focusing on De Lijn (the Flemish bus company) instead, who have data we can easily access, and we know at least they are happy about our work. We even invited them for Apps For Ghent where Bart Nelis, who is working for De Lijn, gave a very interesting lightning talk.

The MIVB/STIB must have noticed our previous work at maps.iRail.be because suddenly, the 10th of May, we received this e-mail:

Il y a quelques semaines, vous nous avez contacté afin d’avoir accès à notre système de Data sharing. A la suite de l’analyse de votre projet, nous nous sommes vus contraints d’opposer un refus à votre demande. Nous constatons aujourd’hui dans un article publié sur frandroid.com (http://www.frandroid.com/69464/et-si-on-developpait-une-appli-pour-les-transports-en-commun-de-votre-ville/) qu’en dépit de notre réponse défavorable, vous communiquez sur votre site internet http://maps.irail.be/?system=MIVB des informations sur notre offre de transport provenant directement de notre site web et que vous reproduisez sans autorisation des éléments qui en sont issus. Par conséquent, nous vous prions de mettre fin immédiatement à cette utilisation de nos données qui, par ailleurs, enfreint les conditions générales d’utilisation de nos différents sites web (http://www.stib.be/legal-terms.html?l=fr).

Le présent e-mail vous est adressé sous toutes réserves et sans reconnaissance préjudiciable aux droits de la STIB.

All this again now that they saw a prototype of something that we stopped developing for now?

This is where we went wrong

We met with our lawyer and without informing the community we argued about either just ignoring this silly request, or taking the MIVB/STIB development offline without any good reason. In exchange for that, we would ask for a meeting where we could discuss cooperating again. Our attorney said we had nothing to worry about. We were not infringing on any laws and he would help defending us if need be.

Sadly, we ignored his advice, took the website down and asked the MIVB/STIB for a meeting. After 2 or 3 emails we agreed to meet on the 28th of June. One important quote from the mail conversation with MIVB/STIB was this one:

J’espère que vous comprendrez que nous poursuivons le même objectif, à savoir une plus grande utilisation des transports publics grâce, notamment, à une plus grande ouverture de nos données, mais que, en utilisant nos données malgré notre refus, vous renforcez les personnes qui s’opposent à cette ouverture.

We indeed have the same goal, but apparently, by doing nothing wrong, we are enforcing the people who are against it? Say what?

So, basically, we are being aggressive by reusing their data (something that we, you guessed it, can just do; without asking), and that supposedly scares off people within the MIVB company?

I guess there really are people against informing and having more people on public transport … Confusing, isn’t it?

A meeting!

The meeting went like this:

iRail: Hi, we’re here for a meeting with Mr. ***
MIVB/STIB: I will call him. … – He says there’s nothing on his schedule and he has no idea who you guys are.
iRail: Oh, but we really do have an appointment.
MIVB/STIB: Ok, he will see you in a minute.

After a short chat in the coffee room about who exactly we were again and what we were doing, he basically said the same as in any other email that was sent. We took the opportunity to inform him again of the non-copyright issue, and of the European directive which clearly says they should open their data. We offered to forward these documents to him and he told us he would let their attorneys look into it, so that’s what we did. No response so far.

When he showed us out, he told us this: “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of any help. But, maybe if you’d send me a specific project description, I might have more leverage to convince management to share the data with you”. That was such a relief to hear!

A project

We decided to present a project where somebody, “a man with a plan”, wanted a television screen in his office with a lot of information, bundling De Lijn, NMBS, Twitter feeds … so that the employees and visitors could be informed in a better way. We made the above illustration to explain the concept. At this moment we have the screen up and running, without data of the MIVB/STIB, as you might have guessed.

The last pillar

For two months we received no reply. “The man with the plan” became a little frustrated and decided to email the MIVB himself:

Notre immeuble de bureau (l’Amadeus Square à Drogenbos) est idéalement situé à cote de vos arrêts “Mozart” et “Humaniteit”  et proche de l’arrêt “Bollinckx”. Nous investissons le maximum pour que les 765 employés dans notre immeuble prennent le transport public, via des leaflets et des écrans en real time dans chaque hall d’entrée.
Voici le contenu de notre écran: http://s.flatturtle.com/amadeus/
Serait-il donc possible d’accorder votre « GO » à notre fournisseur pour le real-time Feed.
Nous l’avons déjà de la SNCB, mais il nous manque le bus.
N’hésitez pas à me contacter pour plus d’info.

He received a reply right away:

Nous ne sommes malheureusement pas en mesure à l’heure actuelle de donner accès à notre real-time feed à des partenaires externes à la STIB et je ne peux donc pas répondre favorablement à votre demande.
Par contre, nous travaillons actuellement à la création de « fiches mobilité dynamiques » qui donnent des informations sur les solutions de transport à proximité d’un lieu, ainsi que les temps d’attente en temps réel pour les lignes passant à proximité de ce lieux. Ce produit sera disponible tant en version web qu’en version écrans. Je pense que ce produit pourra répondre à votre demande.

Not only is he immediately saying that he doesn’t have the data that we used already in February, but he is aso trying to convince him to leave our non-profit organisation and buy an information screen from the MIVB/STIB containing only the MIVB/STIB data.

Never in my life I have ever felt this ridiculed. For me, this is proof that we should first ask the general opinion of the community before acting in name of the NPO. What are the next steps? Continuing, of course. You can access the liveboards through an API over here:

http://api.irail.be/liveboard/?station=stokkel&system=MIVB&lang=nl

This is a work in progress and it should not be used in apps yet. To help improve the system you’re most welcome at http://github.com/iRail/iRail

- Pieter — @pietercolpaert

Revised by Yeri and Greet

Jan and Pieter improved the funcionality in the web interface of The DataTank. On Tuesday they led the workshop about The DataTank, which turned out to be very interesting.

After Ruben left us to work on his thesis, Michiel took over the FlatTurtle project. He worked on some fixes and improvements for the wizard, and solved a big part of the memory leak the infoscreen had. Other than that he continued working on theming possibilities in the wizard.

I did some illustrations for the presentation during the workshop on Tuesday (e.g. the one above), and among other things I made a logo for Apps for Ghent. I also redesigned the website, which will be going live officially very soon (keep an eye on the Apps for Ghent Twitter account)!

And that concludes the month of July for us!

The Gentse Feesten app is still up and running, and we hope it’s helping people find their way in Ghent this week.

Ruben has in the meantime implemented the design for the FlatTurtle info screen wizard, and is working on getting it to work properly. Jan and Pieter are working on the documentation for The DataTank, and have fixed some bugs as well. I have done more of the same things I did in the second week, namely administrative tasks and design work. Unfortunately we don’t have any previews to show you yet this week, but stay tuned for next week!

Since the iRail Summer of code lasts only one month, the workshops were organized and announced on rather short notice. To ensure quality, we have decided to stay focused and stick to the workshop about The DataTank. You can still subscribe for this workshop by sending an email to Greet.

Jan and Pieter have now finished the basis of The DataTank and are further developing it. This first version of The DataTank enabled us to get the Gentse Feesten data online in JSON format in less than 10 minutes.

Ruben has almost finished the wizard to configure the FlatTurtle infoscreens, and will implement the design for it soon. The next step is getting the infoscreens working.

FlatTurtle configuration wizard: preview

Dimitri is done with the basis of Kadee!, meaning he finished the HTML5 framework. He too benefits from The DataTank, for using the data from the Cultuurnet database.

As for me, I did some more administrative work for iRail and FlatTurtle, finished the logo design and wizard design for FlatTurtle, made a video announcement and logo for the Gentse Feesten app, and some more random tasks here and there.

On Friday, the Gentse Feesten data were made available, so Dimitri, Tim and Pieter took it upon themselves to code an app for it in one day. Our Gentse Feesten app is written in HTML5, and it works offline since the data are static anyway. The app provides a simple way to look up events happening now or soon, close to you.

Gentse Feesten app: screenshots

Next week things will be a little more quiet around here, with Dimitri and Tim leaving. But the rest of us continue, and in the fourth week we have the workshops coming up!

Because the Gentse Feesten started on July16th, the iSoc students tried to get the app functionable as soon as possible. On Friday evening, the first version was already online at http://gentsefeesten.irail.be, and over the weekend it was further developed.

In the following video, you can see what the Hackerspace looked like during the making of the Gentse Feesten app.

The workshops will be organised in the last week of July, on Tuesday the 26th, Wednesday the 27th and Thursday the 28th. More detailed information about place, time and subjects can be found on the Summer of code website.

The first workshop, The DataTank: getting started, is about one of the more important projects we are working on this month. The DataTank is a generic API (webservice) which makes acces to open data easier. In this workshop, we will take a look at what The DataTank is exactly, and in what ways it can be useful. After that, you can give it a go yourself and experiment with it.

The second workshop, Build your own mobile app, is just what it says on the box: how to build your own mobile app, on any smartphone. To do this, we will use HTML5 to code a simple mobile website which is accessible offline and thus functions as a mobile app.

In the third workshop, Advanced contact widgets, we will take on the challenge to program a widget for the ‘Contact’ page on company websites and such. What is different about this widget, is that it will show visitors real-time data on how to reach your office or event from where they are, using public transport.

If these topics spark your interest, you are welcome to join us. Let us know if you will be attending one or more workshops by subscribing. See you there!

Jan started from the idea of The DataTank, and together with Pieter he layed the basis of a generic framework, which will enable developers to build API’s efficiently. This framework is now functioning in so far that an infosession could be organised; a more elaborate workshop will become possible later on in the process.

A preview of The DataTank website

Tim is further developing the BeTrains application for Symbian, which is based on the Qt-framework. The DelayAnnouncer Twitter bot he made earlier can still be seen in action on the Twitter accounts @AntwerpCentral, @LiegeGuillemins, @BrusselsCentral, @BrusselsMidi, @BrusselsNorth and @KortrijkStation, but earlier this week the @GentSintPieters account got suspended, and it’s still unclear for what reason.

Screenshots of the BeTrains app for Symbian

Ruben had some difficulties last week while working on the infoscreens application of FlatTurtle. This week things are looking better; right now he’s working on the datawrapper for the database. In general, Ruben is laying the basis of the application’s admin panel.

Dimitri is working on the Kadee! app, for which Bits of love had come up with the idea and a mockup during Apps for Ghent. He is now building a HTML5 framework for it, which will also be usable for other similar apps, and which can be seen here. More specificially, Dimitri is working on a feedback system, on adding information on accessibility of venues (implementing the iRail API for example), and on using The DataTank, for aggregating info from Cultuurnet and others.

Mockup of the Kadee! app

I myself (Greet) have been working on some of the iRail websites; I gave both this blog and the iRail NPO site a makeover, added some content to the Summer of code site and cleaned up the Project wiki a little. I also did some administrative tasks, and currently I’m working on a logo for FlatTurtle and keeping the various websites up to date.

This concludes the first iSoc update; we’ll be back with more news later!

• Train SMS service ( Tuende &  Navetteurs)
• Pieter introduced the iRail Summer of code (iSoc)
• TimE gave a presentation and demo of the Bèta of BeLaws
• Christophe gave a presentation on BeTrains Tablet (Android)
• Some of the iSoc students shortly introduced themselves:
  • Greet
  • Ruben
  • Tim Besard

Other than that, iSoc also organises workshops in July. All interested parties are welcome to come listen to the iSoc students or other speakers.

By not only working on projects individually but also helping and inspiring each other, this event aspires to share knowledge, ideas and visions, keeping the focus on durable mobility and open data.

On the homepage, the database can be searched. The results can then be filtered by type of text (decree, resolution, law, …), geographical area, and the politicians who signed the law. The displayed search result is formatted tidily, making the text more readible, but the original source text is available as well. Don’t hesitate to give it a try, by searching for “onderwijs” (education) for example.

Other than searching the Belgian law, some statistics are also available. An interactive diagram shows which politicians have signed laws together, based on the available data in the database. This way, it becomes clear to what extent certain parties or individual politicians work together with other parties and politicians, including over the language border.

The system is in bèta, so it will be refined. Some laws are still missing from the database, and searching is not yet possible in all of the country’s official languages. When the concept will be further developed, missing laws will be added and searching the database in French and German will be enabled.

The website is developed by Tim Esselens, and any questions can be directed to Pieter of iRail (+32 486 74 71 22 or through the contact form on this website).

Open data is not something magical that will increase innovation and which will grow apps in the wild. It is however needed to be able to innovate. There are two ways a programmer will start developing an application based on data: 1. (s)he needs it in an application he’s building and starts browsing for this. 2. (s)he saw this data is available and though it would be neat to have an application which combines a couple of other datasets with this one. In this article I will only discuss the latter. Open data in terms of innovation and democracy is very important for this first point, the latter however is what makes people want to open their data: on short-term there will be cool applications.

iRail at Hack De Overheid Amsterdam (CC by-sa k4rp)

Apps for Amsterdam organised by the “Hack de overheid”-team was a huge success. The local government from Amsterdam explained what data they had available and were opening at that very moment, journalists were writing about this movement that will save democracy and the free market as such and programmers were coding to win the bounty raised by the city.

Apps for New York worked. Apps for Amsterdam worked. Let’s get this format to most innovative, so they say (don’t shoot the blogger), city of Belgium. Apps for Ghent should become the first of a series Apps for Belgium. What do we need to organise this event? You, probably:

• Sponsors – a free event needs money from sponsors.
• Location – do you know a good location that’s available?
• Datasets – Are you looking for the ideal moment to release your data in the wild?
• Datajournalists – Are you looking to investigate datasets for your articles?
• Journalists/Bloggers – if you want to write about us, you’re welcome too!
• Politicians – Sadly, this is in many cases a political problem and we need politicians to fix this!
• Programmers – last but not least

Contact me: pieter@irail.be or +32 486 74 71 22 if you want to help organising/sponsor/… this event!

Data and information
There is a huge difference between data and information: datasets are huge collections on which you perform queries. Information is the answer to such a query. For instance, if I ask iRail on what platform the train to Antwerp leaves, that’s information. It’s not our purpose to provide users with copious amounts of data concerning all trains on a given day.

To us, the software developers in the NPO, accessibility of information is the most important aspect of our application. If we provide our users with a wrong or incomplete response to their query, nobody will use the application, how nicely engineered it may be. The actual visualisation of that information is realised by a third party, contacting our servers through a well-documented application programming interface (API).

To be able to provide this service the iRail servers need to have access to the relevant data. Since we (plan to) use a lot of datasets – trains, buses, underground, tube, weather reports, street names, point-of-interests… -, it is impractical to require all of our developers to get proper permissions. Therefore the NPO is a huge supporter of open data, which allows everybody to access data without explicit approval. However, having such access to data isn’t only beneficial to us, it is also a key to innovation.

Open information
Recently, we sent a letter to the MIVB/STIB asking to access their data. This would allow our API to provide bus information for the Brussels region as well. Their response was one of plain refusal, since they though we would sublicense their data, something against the company’s terms of data sharing. I hope my reply, similar to this blogpost, brought clarity.

Needless to say, we don’t agree with their point of view:

1. We don’t provide data, we provide information. Developers create «browsers» to this information, using our API.
2. We don’t sublicense data, as we don’t allow someone else to download datadumps. This is not our responsibility, the data should already be available for download on the company’s site.
3. We cannot sublicense something that’s not copyrighted. According to the second European database law, public transport information cannot be copyrighted.

But there is some good news! De Lijn will soon provide us with bus-data for Flanders on these very terms. We cannot call it open data though, as only the iRail servers will have access to the raw data. We will however provide open information: everyone can create applications to fetch information from our API, and the NPO will support those people.

A long way
It’s a long way to get the word out. People pulling the strings usually don’t realise how opening data might even be profitable. But there is also a fear of quality loss when people are allowed to distribute the data over and over again. To that end, open information is the perfect balance between open data and closed data, with the quality being assured by the open API. Creation of such an API can always be out-sourced to NPO’s such as the iRail vzw/asbl. Do not hesitate to contact us!

Pieter and Tim (@pietercolpaert, @maleadt)

The date has been set to 14th February 2011, starting at 19h00, and it will be help at Tour and Taxis.

The invite sent to the list:

Dear list,
Hi guys,

I’d like to invite you the 14th of February for our very first general meeting.

When?
14th February, 2010
Start: 19h00 — doors open at 18h45
Meeting ends around 22h00

Where?
Tour & Taxis, Brussels
> http://goo.gl/maps/xcr3

There will be a shuttle taking you from Brussels North to Tour & Taxi (and back again)

A drink will be provided

Who?
Everyone!
npo member or not, anyone is welcome to participate in this.
Of course, we would like all the npo members to attend.
> Please confirm whether you can attend or not directly to this list or yeri[@]irail.be — thanks !

Those who can’t attend, be sure to be on Skype!

And a final report on the wiki will be provided.

Facilities?
Beamer and internet

Planning?
// If there’s anything you want to discuss that’s not on the planning, please let us know

- npo: what is it and what does it mean?
> Becoming a member?
> Copyright; should I hand it over to the npo ?
> @iRail.be e-mail addresses

- BeTrains
> Showcase
* Qt
* Bada
* WP7
* BB Playbook
* Android

- iRail.be => new UI

- API v2.0
> New specification: more extensible
> New requests: geolocation, POI …
> Requests from API-users fixed
> Wrappers will slowly start using APIv2 in March
> API v1.0 stays up and supported until 2012
> Extensions: De Lijn, MIVB & TEC (hopefully!)

Further details will be posted on the wiki.

Everyone interested in iRail, BeTrains and anything related to this is welcome to attend.

We hope to see you there!

Special thanks to Christophe Petitjean of RentalVALUE for sponsoring the location.

What is BeTrains?
BeTrains defines itself as “A handy mobile application for the belgian train users. It lets you plan your trips very quickly and makes it possible to share messages with other users for a happy travel.”

The iPhone application has two main features: Chat and Route planner.

The Chat gives the opportunity to the users to leave messages on any subject and attach it to a specific train or station. A picture and precise geolocalisation can be attached to each message. What the users will do with the Chat is up to them: announce an event on a train or station, tell what goes through their mind, share a funny picture … our only concern is for them to have fun!

The Route planner is a very straight-forward implementation of the iRail API. Users can quickly plan their train trip using the various inputs (station select, date/hour of departure/arrival). As new features are added to the iRail API, the iPhone application will progressively integrate them through periodic updates.

Overall, the application focuses on simplicity and efficiency. Be sure to get it and tell us what you think about it!

Here’s a quick history of the making of the application
About two months ago, Louis de Decker who met Christophe Versieux (developer of the Android version) joined the iRail team.

As Louis wanted to practice his young iPhone development skills on a useful application while using the iRail API, he saw a perfect opportunity in making the Betrains iPhone application. The objective for Louis was to follow the existing landmarks set by the Android application while adding a social feature called the “Chat”.
After only a month, a beta-version of the application was released. A two week testing-period then followed. The 10 beta-testers did a great job finding the last remaining bugs and made a lot of cool suggestions to improve the app. After polishing the app a last time, it was submitted and approved by Apple after only 10 days.

The iRail team was thrilled to see the immediate positive response from the first users of the application. After only 4 days of availability in the Appstore, BeTrains already made it in the top-50 of the free apps in belgium. A very promising start !

For more information about all the BeTrains applications, visit http://www.betrains.com

I’m probably one of the few of your customers who does not blame you for the delays yesterday. There have been extreme conditions, which only happen one or two weeks a year, and dealing with several events, such as power-shortage and derailment due to mud, are not always as easy as some may proclaim. I do however blame you for the lack of information you provided during this chaos.

2 examples of December the second and the third

1. My sister, Lisa Colpaert, wanted, instead of going 30 minutes by bike, to go to school by train yesterday morning. It was the first time she planned to do that, and maybe if she would have found that a convenient way of traveling, she would do that more often in the future.

7:25: Lisa buys a ticket from her own money (she babysits) at the ticket office.
7:26: Lisa goes upstairs with a friend to wait on the platform for the train to come (should be there 7:36)
7:27: Other commuters inform her the train has been canceled.

The first question that comes to mind is:

Will my sister get her refund (yes, from Harelbeke to Kortrijk is still a lot of money for someone who babysits once a week)?

But maybe a more important question to ask:

Has the NMBS decided in those 2 minutes, that the train got canceled? Why didn’t they and my sister know earlier?

2. I study in Ghent and I decided to return to Harelbeke in the afternoon.

16:50: I arrive at the station of Ghent St Pieters. I’m waiting on platform 9 for my train to arrive at 17:09 (no delays reported)

17:06: Train appears to be canceled. “Next train to Harelbeke,” the speakers shout, “is the train on plaform 5″, which normally would have arrived 16:55, but has a delay of 15 minutes. Immediately a lot of people started moving towards platform 5 because we had to get there in less than 4 minutes now.

Stuffed train

Unreadable TV-screens

17:10: A lot (see picture) of people welcomed us at platform 5, where an already overpopulated train could not handle any more passengers.

Arrival at platform9

Standing on a stairway in the train

After finally surviving as one of the fittest while embarking a half hour later, we made it on the staircase of that train. I arrived home 1½h late, missing the family dinner.

Of course I don’t tell you this because I want to keep people from commuting by train. To the contrary! With iRail we want to get more people using public transport and we want them to have a nice experience. This means of course we want to inform them as quick as possible about any delay and we want to give information about how populated a train is. We also want to do predictions of delays and research what trains tend be delayed regularly.

Yes… but how can iRail help preventing these situations?

I’d like to answer this question with other questions: Would I have left my place if I knew my train was canceled? Would I have left my place so early if I knew the next train had a 90% estimated chance of being delayed? Would I have gone to platform 5 if I knew the train was already too densely populated?

So, all these features, we can do that for you! In fact,  we are already developing this! For free! We are commuters, customers, public transport enthusiasts and we want these tools because we are confronted with it every day.

If only we could have access to quality data, more easily…

Samenvatting antwoord Vervotte:

1. De rechtstreekse aanleiding van de cease and desist brief was een klacht van een klant waarbij de klant een kwaliteitsprobleem met iRail expliciet en onterecht toeschreef aan de NMBS.
2. De NMBS is verplicht om haar belangen inzake intellectuele rechten te verdedigen. Ik heb wel aan de NMBS gevraagd om zich  wat soepeler op te stellen, als het gaat over het ter beschikking stellen van databanken die gebruikt worden voor gratis consulteerbare, informatieve applicaties op het internet.
3. De NMBS geeft er momenteel de voorkeur aan om in dialoog te treden en op zoek te gaan naar een minnelijke schikking. Dat impliceert natuurlijk onderling respect van de betrokken partijen.
4. De NMBS heeft contacten gehad met enkele grote bedrijven waarmee strategische partnerschappen kunnen worden afgesloten. De NMBS zal de contacten tussen andere softwarebedrijven en iRail niet beletten, als de samenwerking gebeurt onder de  voorwaarden die tussen de NMBS en iRail of andere bedrijven kunnen worden afgesproken en gerespecteerd.
5. Om de rezigers degelijk te informeren en om te beantwoorden aan de doelstelling van het beheerscontract gebruikt de NMBS de  software HAFAS, die ontwikkeld werd door dat gespecialiseerde bedrijf.

Mijn bedenkingen bij de antwoorden van minister Vervotte:

1. Was dat een klacht van één klant? Op het moment dat iRail.be door 5 mensen per dag werd geraadpleegd? De webscraper van Yeri Tiete was inderdaad in kwaliteit ondermaats. Vanaf de brief is daar verandering in gekomen. Ging de klacht van die klant naar Yeri gestuurd zijn, zou iRail vast en zeker die problemen hebben opgelost. Gratis.
2. Intellectuele eigendomsrechten zegt u? In onze eerste brief terug naar de NMBS hebben we nochtans heel duidelijk gemaakt dat de NMBS helemaal geen intellectuele rechten heeft op de database. Waarom gaat het nog steeds daarover? Laten we duidelijk zijn dat wij niet de goedkeuring nodig hebben van de NMBS om die data te gebruiken. Het is volgens de wet publiek toegankelijke data, dan moet het ook als open data behandeld worden.
3. Een minnelijke schikking is dus niet nodig. Als de NMBS kwaliteit wilt aanbieden en ons toelaten, moeten ze ook zorgen dat wij op een degelijke manier aan de informatie kunnen. Als de NMBS wilt communiceren mogen ze mij altijd bellen, maar voorlopig is het bij die ene vergadering gebleven waar er niet veel gezegd geweest is. Wij hebben van onze kant al proberen contact terug op te nemen maar telefoongesprekken komen niet verder dan secretaresses.
4. We mogen officieel doordoen met wat we bezig zijn en kunnen ontwikkelen voor derden… op voorwaarde dat we ons houden aan de opgestelde voorwaarden. Welke voorwaarden? Wij hebben nooit voorwaarden gezien en, nogmaals, wij zijn niet verplicht om jullie in te lichten over ons gebruik van de data. Wij zijn heel erg bereid om samen met de NMBS te werken aan een betere kwaliteit voor het brengen van informatie naar hun klanten.
5. Respect moet van beide kanten komen. Wij zijn apps aan het ontwikkelen voor heel wat verschillende platformen zoals je kan zien op http://project.iRail.be. De NMBS heeft onlangs via HACON, het gespecialiseerd bedrijf, een iphone application aangekocht. Hoeveel kostte die applicatie? Konden ze niet onze iphone application, wat een gratis en open-source project is, helpen afwerken en op de markt brengen? En wat met al die andere platformen?

Misschien hebben ze niet gezien dat HAFAS ook een XML-interface te koop stelt zodat klanten zelf applicaties kunnen schrijven. Is dit geen beter idee voor de toekomst, minister Vervotte?

(Onze dank aan parlementslid Peter Dedecker voor het stellen van de vragen.)