Our iPhone app has now been open-sourced and available on GitHub under the GPL version 2 license!
Roadmap – project team needed!
A few weeks after the initial release of the app, a crashfix release (1.01) was issued. We've not heard of any more crash reports since.
In terms of a roadmap (no pun intended!), if people come forward to help:
For version 1.1 we'd like to implement a range of small fixes, which basically tidy up rough edges, usability fixes, text changes, and implement smaller improvements that didn't make it into the 1.0 release. Also, any improvements in stability and responsiveness would be good to include, if developers can spot optimisations that could be achieved.
For version 1.2, we'd like to add native iPad compatibility (we understand this doesn't involve too many changes – mainly screen layout definitions), a places directory, and a few new features related to the Photomap.
For version 2, we'd like to fulfil our long-standing and ultimate aim for the app, which is a full turn-by-turn satnav mode with speech directions. We obtained a quote back in January for voice synthesis of street names – which would be on a share-of-app-price basis. This means that such a feature would mean a 'CycleStreets Pro' paid-for upgrade. However, we want to keep the standard app free, and so that would have voice directions that don't involve reading street names. The other key feature for version 2 would be upload of GPX files.
These are our own ideas and those of people who have submitted feedback so far. Naturally we'd welcome any further ideas and the priorities of developers who can volunteer their time.
We also have an innovative proposal that we are about to submit to GeoVation which would benefit the app (and potentially other mobile apps using our routing) – stay tuned.
Bug list – can you spot how to fix these bugs?
Can you spot how to fix these bugs or implement suggested new features? :
If so, we'd love to hear from you!
Project team
We're keen to build a project team to take the app forward. There are various changes and bugfixes we'd like to put in that didn't make it in time for the release, as well as add new features that people have been requesting.
If you'd be interested to implement fixes, and thus join our project team, drop us a line and we can give you rights to write to the repository.
Just to be clear – we don't have any funding, so this is an open source effort, but you will receive the warm glow of users of the app, who are planning thousands of route km per day!
The license
The code has been licensed under the GPL version 2, as it's the one we're most familiar with already and as it is a true copyleft license.
However, we recognise there is debate within the iPhone development community about the suitability of this license given the rules applying to release of software on the app store, so we are happy to consider applying dual-licensing, preferably a copy-left license, but will need some advice on this as we are less familiar with other licenses.
PS – Other apps
Our other apps – Android and Mobile HTML versions – are coming along. We hope to have news soon, though they will be released more quickly if further volunteers come forward to help out and/or if funding can be found.
One thought to “iPhone app open sourced – and can you help us develop it?”
Glad to see you've open sourced the code. Regarding speech synthesis have you thought about just using the "say" command on a Mac, or perhaps Festival on linux? You could perhaps combine it with a crowd-sourced method for checking that the generated sounds were ok with the ability to tweak it if it isn't?