Re: [RFC] On the roles of Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.
 

who's going to manage repos, elections, inquiries from people who want to get their account changed, packages that break, new maintainers, upload permissions, techstaff, old maintainers, mails to garage, "making friends with Jolla", mails to council, last instance to appeal when bans etc happen, announcements, coordination...
You're now doing all this on yourself? Good luck! We started to run into difficulties when 5 council members been involved and needed to coordinate with each other.
Council IS proxy of community, among other stuff. Council however first and foremost is *work* for stewardship.
And a "council with real power", that would be something new and I don't know if I like that idea. We seen how it ended when guys in HiFo BoD thought they had "real power". Basically this directly got us into this whole mess

>>And if we do, who will proxy the proxy, possibly ad infinitum?<< let's see, last election valid ballots been ~100 (ok a tad less, but then the councils with 3 members were best of all, not those with 5) so proxy of community is 1/20. Now 1/20 proxy of 5 guys in council is who? rzr's left foot? your hamster?

Just ran into a post that made me wonder if man ever learns: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...48#post1329148 Took us less than 2 years to be at same point again.
Golden: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...82#post1349282 authentic deja vu, eh?

Falk's (warfare. maemo master sysop) mail signature:

Re: [RFC] On the roles of Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.
 

I was once a member of a club with about 30 members. That's at least on the same order of magnitude as those ~100 active voters. We had a Prersident, a VP for membership, a VP for this, a VP for that, a Treasurer, two Sergeants in arms... in all, about 10 roles. Due to the small size of the club some people held multiple roles, so there was a Board of about 6 officials.

What we did not have was a council. The Board had the executive power (ordering materials, handling finances, organizing events...) and was responsible directly to the GA (the remaining 24 club members).

In my mind this club works exactly the same way (maybe not right now, but that should be the ultimate goal). The President represents the club officially. Negotiates with Nokia and Jolla, speaks with lawyers etc. The Treasurer handles the bank account. The VP for Membership handles the user accounts, bans, refraction points, permissions etc. Sergeants in Arms are the techstaff. They look after the hardware, maintain the website, garage and repositories. Simples.

In our club, all these roles were rotating on an annual basis. I am assuming the same here, though I am ready to stand corrected. Are the BoD permanent? If they are, what happens if one of them gets run over by a bus?

Re: [RFC] On the roles of Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.
 

I wish the tresurer would just handle the bank account, as supposed.
And you volunteer to do all the rest, right? Why you're not in council? And who's willing to wait for a GA that happens once a year, to get important pressing stuff handled and decided? Will you have a referendum for every single point? Are you running that referendum, are you sending out the ballots? Are you writing the rules how such procedure has to get done?
o.O :-S
And forget about sysops doing what you assign to them, they got way too much on their plate already, techstaff been around 15 people once, all cooperating without any hierarchy. Until chemist done one of his famous Leeroy Jenkins stunts. Since then Master Sysop Falk basically doesn't say a word anymore, xes has announced he#s only sporadically available, nevertheless he is the one who fixes shellshock when Pali announces newest CVE and I forward that to xes when I see him lurking. Guess who's not doing anything bejond maintaining tmo! And when he does, techstaff /queries me and asks for translation, since his barrack square commands are rarely helpful and no chance to ask what he meant since he's already gone again, according to his major mantra: L J.

And again, we had maybe 100 valid votes, but we sent out over 6000 ballots. Are you saying now only those who don't use their right to NOT vote are eligible to ever vote again?
What when I answer: those 5900 who didn't vote hoped that everything will continue as usual? That they can drop in on every week's council meeting and ask / discuss whatever they want with council and council will take care. Maybe they simply felt no need to vote. And you want to punish them for not having _enough_ interest? That for sure will please them.

And I was once member of a club who never had any decent meeting at all... Maybe we should do same? Analogies rarely ever really work, particularly when they are so much off like a club of 30 members form a FOSS community of 6000...60000

Re: [RFC] On the roles of Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.
 

No. If I was the VP for membership, I would do the membership stuff. If I was the treasurer, I would do the treasurer stuff. Some roles can be combined but no one should be expected to take on more than two.

First and foremost, because until this thread was created, I did not quite understand what exactly the role of the council was. Secondly, because of all the things I listed here.

I believe we have crossed wires somewhere along the line. VP = Vice President. If a Board member cannot attend for a long time or proves otherwise problematic, an immediate election is called for to replace him/her.

Regarding 100 vs 6000 members, I personally do not see much difference. Even if all 6000 were active, a single tier structure would still be enough. This is not a country with a government and a two-chamber parliament. This is a club.

Re: [RFC] On the roles of Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.
 

For the reasons why you're not in council, I think they are pretty sound, but don't you think they also would forbid you doing a (decent) job as VP or treasurer? And what do you think how many members you'll find who don't have similarly sound arguments why they love to discuss a lot in GA but can't do the work?
No, this is a community, and all your VPs and Presidents and treasurers and tech soldiers and whatnot already exist, they just got other names. Council is the orga part, the office. You suggest to restructure everything, just because... I think it's better to cling to working structures instead of nuking them to reinvent them poorly. The idea that there's no need for council anymore since Nokia is gone is about as reasonable as the idea to fire the secretary because the design department doesn't use pencils anymore, so no secretary needed to sharpen them. I explained in one of my last 3 posts that council has a lot of duties that pass almost unnoticed and get silently done in background. Council also discussed e.g. speedpatch stuff with community and finally decided what to do with it. This went less unnoticed but again seems nobody even remembers it. I for one don't want to be member in a community err club that has a dedicated officer (appointed for at least one year, or probably lifetime, by a "GA" of 20) for that who thinks he can decide on own discretion and wisdom what to do in such a case.
Re your "single-tier", maemo basically is a zero-tier structure, since there's no government at all. And we are all happy with that. And that didn't change since Nokia, we had same organization before Nokia vanished. The only difference: sysops been Eero, Niels, and Ferenc, and they did more stuff like repo management, ML mainentance etc since they knew their stuff and got paid (fulltime?) and council wasn't needed to tell them what to do, though it could have done so (and occasionally did). And they knew what's legal and what's not and nobody could force them to do something illegal, anybody caliming "I been forced to do that " is... xxx. When Nokia passed over (or did they already? I don't think so) the whole maemo.org, the legal responsibility got transferred from Nokia to BoD, while the technical maintenance got assigned from BoD to council who appointed me (with consent of BoD) to coordinate (= execute) that stuff, and I delegated it to our sysops and maintainers. Eero transferred the root passwords to Falk and me, with consent from BoD, council, Nokia. That's where we are today. Eventually chemist came up with the idea that coordination of techstaff was no longer needed and tried to dismiss me. Well, think about it what you like. The rootpasswords are not written down on any paper here so I cannot hand them out, I'm not taking care about the whole infra anymore, and Falk got my appologies that now he's the one to deal with that mess ("upward", not among techstaff peers, a fine bunch!). Good luck when those who think "have the power" pester him same way they did (and do) with me. Then it's a question of months until the servers really are going down from bitrotting in maintenance mode. meanwhile council handles a dozen package-maintainer requests and 4 or 5 upload-permission-requests every month. I guess you know what I'm talking about and how you take over that task. And it's only one of several.

Re: [RFC] On the roles of Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.
 

Excellent. In other words, we are already nearly there. All that is left is merging the two offices into one. Like in any other club (or a community if you like), a Board meeting includes the president, the treasurer, the secretary... all in one room.

BTW, thanks for your last few edits. They really helped to explain the exact roles, something that should have been explained right from the start. Or maybe it was but lost in the sea of unfortunate personal attacks. Or maybe you assumed that everybody knew. But I was still under the impression that the council was merely the negotiator and eV was the executor. The natural question was, what is there to negotiate? From what you are telling me, there is no negotiator and the council is the executor. Which begs the question what the role of eV is. If it is really just to be the treasurer and the face of the community to the outside world, then that sounds like a compelling argument for merging the council and eV into one and eliminate the "us and them" mentality. It's all "us".

(Howgh. I have finished. I am going to continue monitoring this thread but will not contribute any more noise.)

Re: [RFC] On the roles of Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.
 

council already IS merged into both HiFo and MCeV. For HiFo we even had a referendum adjusting rules between maemo council and HiFo council so that after that (and two councilors stepping down since they were no member of "both councils") the council could legally declare it's ONE council now and obeys both rulesets (which were identical in that moment) The rest of HiFo bylaws had no rules conflicting with those council rules (obviously since otherwise the HiFo rules would have been self-contradicting) - but then HiFo also had no GA that allegedly is allowed to change council rules with 2/3 majority. For MCeV the maemo council got "elected" to be the MCeV council. Nevertheless the council is bound to all three rulesets, it cannot cherrypick. When MCeV bylaws have rules that are conflicting with council rules, then MCeV has a massive problem. And HiFo has a massive problem with handing over assets to MCeV, since that could create liabilities which I myself want to steer clear of as far as possible. So we now have one council with three "jobs"

The ONLY point of discussion is that some funny people think we should abolish it now, while most think council has no voice and BoD should ignore it. (well, a further point of discussion is the new GA/regular members creating exactly this "we, the new leete community, and they the old obsolete lazy zombies" mentalilty.

Re: [RFC] On the roles of Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.
 

Now threatening me again? Accusing me of all kinds of things throughout the whole eV discussion and all-of-a-sudden I didn't do anything wrong? The stick and the carrot? Can't decide?
Honestly, get your sh*t together. I clearly stated that I prefer option 4 as described in the todays' MC eV bylaws and as pointed out here:
But unless you, I'm not that much hellbound for anything really, I might as well support option 1.) as suggested by juiceme. Or even draw the ultimate consequence in order to get organisational structures right and suspend council. IF MAJORITY DEMANDS so, I will respect and support that too.

I gave proof with the quote. You now simply declare it all was just a mistake? - Please elaborate quickly, so that after your inevitable rant, we can hopefully get back on topic...

Me too. In fact, I'm thrilled to the bone to finally experience your rejection. Please fasten your seatbelt. :D

Again, get your accusations right, I'm pretty much in favor of a council, according to the bylaws I drafted.
Really the only one far and wide who refuses to respect that is YOU.

Exactly ;). My take is that you violated HiFos' as well as MC eVs' mission and rules. Furthermore, you are acting against Council majoritys' will. AFAIK, there is consensus within council that you cannot remain your position, given the situation. If you really really insist to have it absolutely failproof and 100% according to applicable association rules* (not law), you are forcing council to delay this topic again for another week. This is your equitable right though, as undoubtfully for the time being, HiFo bylaws (IX. MEMBERSHIP) are in effect which state:
But sure, continue your Sodom und Gomorra strategy if you're convinced that's the right thing to do. will make it it even easier in the end to reject you from whatever position you sneaked in.

I can even smell the disrespect gushing out your pores towards your supposedly council collegues... Calm down, this whole issue is only tangent to your problematic person. It is about progress in general that you seem unable or even unwilling to contribute to in a meaningful way. Missing the days where you could push around the other two supposedly council collegues to your liking?
I pointed this out before and really wonder why nobody picked it up yet.

Probably went under the radar of readers due to the immense effort joerg is putting in derailing this very important discussion and all the good will and effort juiceme put in it...
So because this issue is of such major importance, correlates with last referendums' situation and unveils the dimensions of joergs' strains, I'm presenting it again:
Joerg conveniently (I assume ;)) not only ignored original intention of last referendum (as drafted by Mentalist Traceur), but also forced his interpretation of things into it later. I urge everybody to thoroughly read this post and klick through the links. Mentalist Traceur was VERY clear about the original intention:

Sorry, it's too obvious that in fact it's you who is imposing himself as standing on higher ground and showing fascistic trait. Frankly, the "dictators" are Juiceme, Chemist and <strike>Niel</strike>, the latter bailing out last mnute in good tradition to so many others before him. I really wonder how many community members will have to be sacrificed before you stop your war against any kind of self-organisation.

PS: How's Falks' signature relevant to your segregational behaviour? Don't even try to speak for others unless you come up with something more reliable than a signature, At least we know by now what your change of signature been worth... and please refrain from adorning yourself with borrowed plumes.

Re: [RFC] On the roles of Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.
 

less alcohol might help a lot ;-) Or at least better one. I'm doing you a favor not answering, so you don't have to post more stuff like this. just one thing so you know what to dream of. MT wasn't the king of maemo, he was one peer in a council that finally declared unanimously that maemo council and hifo council JOIN. And no, this topic is of absolutely NO importance anyway, what counts is that the maemo council rules and HiFo rules got synced.

Re: [RFC] On the roles of Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.
 

This is your sheer personal misconception of the case. Originally it was meant otherwise. I'm disconsolate Mentalist Traceur can't reply for himself, but at least he allowed me to quote him. Here's his take:

Dejavue?