NBIS was looking for a $1 per download licensing fee, but Peterson says that when he really looked into things, it's not clear that NBIS has the right to do this. (He initially charged US$2.99 for the software, but now says he'll give it away, if he can just get Apple to let him publish his app.)

That's because the SFMTA says that it owns of the data and it's totally fine for Routsey to use it. "We're looking at making all of our data as public as possible," SFMTA spokesman Judson True told me.

The saga hasn't played too well in San Francisco, where many are up in arms. San Francisco paid around $10 million to set up the system. Why is a private company now preventing anyone from using this public data in a useful way?

Peterson told me that he feels he's being shaken down. NextBus Information Systems has said it has a legitimate claim to the data, which the SFMTA, in turn, thinks it owns. Apple won't touch the whole mess with a 10-foot pole.

If the SFMTA has some kind of contract that clearly spells out who owns what, it's not producing it. And neither is NBIS.

So in the meantime, riders miss buses, and San Francisco, one hopes, learns a lesson: It's the data, stupid. Keeping it open isn't just good for business, it's a public service.

True says that the situation is "causing us to evaluate our policies and practices." That's a good thing, because governments sit on a huge amount of data, and technologies like the iPhone and Google Maps are giving us new ways of processing and visualizing this information, just so long as legal wrangling doesn't get in the way.