It is with a great deal of optimistic excitement that I would like to announce that MTA has agreed to retract all of its claims against StationStops!

MTA Marketing notified me last week that they had sent a priority request to Apple to return StationStops for iPhone for sale in the iTunes App Store immediately.

I have been putting off all changes to my blog until Apple serviced the request, but Apple has to date not reinstated the app or responded to any of my requests for confirmation of receipt.

At the same time, I did let my Twitter followers know, and revealed as much to Michael Grynbaum of The New York Times in a follow-up for his excellent article today, which was echoed in The Village Voice, so I want to avoid any confusion people might have when they come to the blog.

It’s true, its over.

I want to congratulate MTA on it’s change of course in its dialog with developers. Since the conflict began, MTA has made meaningful changes in its policies and retracted its claims not only against StationStops, but TheNextTrain developer Jehiah Czebotar and SF T-Shirt designed Joe Moore in a related licensing issue.

But most encouraging are statements from the MTA itself in the New York Times article where it clarifys that it indeed is looking for a new approach.

There is still an enormous amount of work to do in getting MTA data feeds online and into the hands of developers and passengers under reasonable terms.

Thankfully I will be continuing this work no longer through defensive legal action but through positive, cooperative, action via the New York Public Transit Data Summit.

I met with the group for the first time last week, which is led by Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock of the Open Planning Project.

It’s membership consists of developers like myself and Jehiah, as well as other representatives of the Open Planning Project, The Brooklyn Law School Incubator & Policy Clinic, Straphangers Campaign and other individuals with interest in the issue of open transit data.

I have been knee-deep in this issue for 2 months now, and I absolutely feel this group is the most well-staffed, well-informed and effective organization to lead progress in this area moving forward and encourage anyone with interest to join the Meetup group.

I think this organization will also make life easier on MTA in understanding what is needed from a technical and EULA perspective as well as offering real engineering talent to help make it happen, if they are willing.

During this conflict, I received an enormous amount of support from many people, many of whom I will mention in an upcoming post.

But for now, I just want to congratulate MTA again on changing its course, and look forward to what our new relationship brings for MTA passengers moving forward.