A term that perennially creates buzz in the technology world is “open source,” meaning a piece of technology whose basic construction is given out to third-party developers. For example, Google offers the code to many of its technologies in order to allow companies and individuals design software to work with Google products such as Google Maps.
As you might imagine, this makes Google fairly popular among talented developers and the number of add-on features therefore makes Google products popular among users.
Transit agencies don’t exactly have long lines of code that are going to be interesting to software developers, and most of their transit technologies are proprietary and owned by private companies. So what can they offer?
Maps and timetables.
Almost everyone is carrying some form of mobile device (phone, PDA, Blackberry, iPod, et cetera), all with the same idea that they can keep all of their data on one device. So it might be ridiculous to expect someone to carry a clunky transit map around with them. But a map always available on an iPod? Fantastic.
Like all good ideas, this one is already fairly common. As far as most are concerned, the first person to put out an iPod-ready transit map was William Bright on ISubwayMaps.com (formerly iPodSubwayMaps.com).
And like all good ideas, someone called a lawyer to put a stop to it. Shortly after Bright put up his maps, reps from BART and the New York MTA issued C&D orders. This created a lot of negative buzz for both orgs and Bright ended up designing his own version.
The C&D orders weren’t completely ridiculous. As mentioned yesterday, it’s important for agencies to protect their design licenses in order to reap the maximum benefits from merchandising. And there is a risk when someone else takes your data that they’re going to screw it up.
But both of these problems can be easily fixed by setting up guidelines when making your map data (which is already readily available) open source. By creating a license that says your data can only be used for non-commercial purpose and must be appropriately updated you avoid the two major risks involved.
Hats off to the CTA and WMATA, both of which approved the iPod subway maps and, in the case of the CTA, even supplied Bright with master digital copies of their data.
There are new tech products introduced to the market every day and it’s often difficult, and sometimes not cost-effective, to make transit data available for each new one. But with individual developers willing and ready to do it for free, transit agencies shouldn’t be in the habit of discouraging them.
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