30 January 2024
UIC and its partners DB, SBB and SNCF held the kick-off meeting of the Board of Directors of the OpenRail association on 29 January at the UIC headquarters in Paris.
The associated companies nominated their representatives, who also became members of the Board of Directors, as follows:
- DB, represented by Nicole GÖBEL, CEO DB Systel
- SBB, represented by Jochen DECKER, CIO
- SNCF, represented by Frédéric NOVELLO, Deputy Group CIO
- UIC, represented by Jean-Michel EVANGHELOU, Director of Financial Control and Project Operations, Director of Telecom, Signalling & Digital
The four Directors elected Jochen DECKER – SBB as the first Chair of the association.
A Technical Committee was established as a permanent working body charged with selecting, integrating and managing the open-source projects to be part of the OpenRail community and project portfolio. It is formed by three members named by the Board and at least one representative of each project integrated into the OpenRail portfolio. The first three members of the Technical Committee are:
- Cornelius SCHUMACHER, Open-Source Steward – CTO-Team, DB Systel
- Peter KELLER, Digitalisation, SBB
- Loïc HAMELIN, Director OSRD Program, DGEX DIGIT – SNCF Réseau
A Charter for the Technical Committee was validated by the Board, setting out the main principles of functioning for this operational working body.
The Board of Directors also approved the fees for 2024, thus opening the gate for new members to join the association as soon as the process of incorporation is finished. Four categories of membership are available: platinum, gold and silver categories for companies, and an associate category for universities and NGOs, the last being free of any financial contribution.
Individual developers – whether students, researchers, self-employed persons or employees – are also very welcome to join the community and contribute to the open projects for free.
On the subject of individual contributions, several OpenRail team members will be attending FOSDEM 2024 at the end of this week, on 3 and 4 February in Brussels, Belgium, where they will host a devroom (developer room) called “Railways and Open Transport”. This item was selected to be held for the second year running at FOSDEM, after its well-received debut in 2023. [1]
The co-organisers of the devroom are Max Mehl, Simon Clavier, Cornelius Schumacher, Loic Hamelin, Peter Keller and Mahalia Stephan. Together, they will explore the space of free and open-source software in the context of railways and public transport.
