Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Please stop fighting on tmo - get in a bar drink some beer and break some bottles...

For the question if this is needed. If there is no legal entity representing this community there is no sane way to pay things, receive donations, sign contracts and so on without having a legal issue at some point.
As soon as it comes to money, contracts and ownership I do not want a private person to be solely responsible or in charge. Bad things happen!

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

First and fore-most: I'm not here to battle you, Joerg. I'm here to tell the community simple basic facts that you appear to be lacking and misrepresenting.

I have no intention of filing a lawsuit against anyone over maemo.org or it's content. I don't speak for Nokia, MS, Adobe or anyone else though.

Migration happened in several stages. At Nemein, Maemo.org was scattered across several separate devices that shared functions with non-Maemo production servers. An initial migration was done by Nemein to condense that down into a few smaller VM servers, which were then turned over to HiFo and the techteam setup to complete that migration.

X-fade (and at least one other) was indeed in charge of that first migration, which happened long before anyone from the community, yourself included, had shell access to any of the systems in question. It happened on their internal network, before it was shipped out. It's also why the system we started up on day one had several busted parts, including karma, builder, garage, m.o login, voting, and more.

I never claimed it was. I was pointing out that if something were offered on maemo.org, even unintentionally, that contains 3rd party blobs it would put HiFo and it's directors at risk. And not just from Nokia or MS, but from the 3rd parties as well, some of whom are known for going after small targets.

One thing that does contain a flash plugin: Images for PR 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3. They ALL contain the flash plugin for microb as part of the image, along with several other 3rd party binaries covered under EULA. You know, those things you were claiming were FOSS earlier...

I'm not wearing any cap. Frankly, I don't hate you. I'm curious why you can't see reality, but there's no hate.

I also don't wear that hat of Board either. You may have missed it, but I resigned from the Board weeks ago. I posted to TMO, and mailed council, board, and even tech staff, as well as mentioning it on IRC in #maemo and #maemo-meeting. It's even in my signature, has been since the 15th.

Do you really think Nokia couldn't shut it down? Who will fight them in the courts? HiFo? You think the few grand we have in the bank will hire us a legal defender? One that's a match for Nokia's purse for a legal team?

Yes, they do. They're the network jack we're plugged into right now. Do you think Nokia wouldn't send a C&D there if the e-mail to HiFo resulted in no action? Do you think they would just shrug their shoulders, go "oh well, we tried" and walk away, letting us do as we please?

I see.. because you're a legal expert on US and Finnish law now? Do you have a law degree I'm unaware of? If so, please to speak up.

When there have been questions on what's running or about technical issues, HiFo has asked techstaff. I recall doing that on IRC and via e-mail several times in just the past couple months or so when I was still on the Board. When legal advice is needed, it's sought from legal professionals, not techstaff or the community. Do you get legal advice from the clerk at the local grocery mart? Why do you expect that of HiFo?

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

So you'd throw away everything, risk the whole works, to prove you're "right"? There you have it folks. Thanks for making that crystal clear, Joerg.

Do you see now why no one consults you on confidential things? You demand trust and inclusion, then threaten to break that confidence you demanded in the next post... bravo!

I think the only one that's dangerous here is you.

You, who are willing to threaten taking down servers, breaking trust, and taking legal action. You, who are willing to expose things publicly that you may have been entrusted with because of your position as techstaff. You, because you believe you are right, and everyone else on the Board, and the legal council they've talked to over these matters, is wrong. You are willing to risk everyone... but yourself.

That is, in large part, why I left the Board. I didn't feel like taking the hit for you throwing another childish tantrum, which have been increasing in frequency over the past quarter. It's one thing to have to deal with you on IRC, TMO, as Council or techstaff, where I can simply log off or ignore the forums for a few days until your rant is over. But when your tantrums can have legal and financial consequences for me? No thanks.

You think you're so perfectly right? Put yourself on the line: Join the Board, and/or get involved with the e.V. Become legally responsible for what's going on day to day on maemo.org. Then preach your legal philosophy of being able to do whatever you deem to be legal in your own mind, and to hell with what Nokia, MS, lawyers, or anyone else thinks. When you can suffer the consequences for your being wrong, then I might just take you seriously. Aber ich bezweifle, dass du die eier dafür hast.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Oi yoi yoi!!!!

Any one else deeply concerned by YET another furball between people-who-count in the maemo/hildon world?

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

You mean me? No. I don't count. Haven't for a couple weeks at least, so no worries there. :)

Don't worry. One way or another, things will be resolved within a few months. This time there's no resetting the clock.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

I think I don't need to again prove every single of your claims false, woody. Everybody able to read can clearly see. And I'm bored by your weird way to twist truth to insult and attack me.
maybe you simply better shut up and finally delete your tmo account like you announced you would do instead of ruining the whole thing.
hint: you claiming I ever was so stupid to consider fiasco images a FOSS data is enough of an insult already. You implying those are available via maemo.org exhibits either your arguing method or your ignorance. I'm not asking you to prove where I ever said that fiasko were FOSS, I simply say "already shut up PLEASE!"

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

I'd prefer to not have to deal with this sort of unqualified unsolicited insult and attack at all, neither in a bar nor at tmo
Well, I tend to agree. Nevertheless it's a fact that maemo the community survived 14 months based on exactly this "configuration" while the preferred setup of "HiFo entity" just gave us headache all the time. I'm also fed up with being one of "the private persons" and soon I will start taking measures to discontinue this situation, but I think it's legitimate to ask if we really need HiFo entity and particularly what are the "new" purposes of such entity, considering that any contract with Nokia is unlikely to ever happen and even when it happens it's more than questionable if it's beneficial to the community. Obviously nobody been willing to answer yet what exactly are the benefits community can expect from such contract, all I heard so far is FUD about made-up intelectual property of Nokia in any binary or sourcecode hosted on http://maemo.org. Sorry I still fail to see any such IP. I'm rather sure it's already available somewhere, but if needed techstaff can once more provide a `sudo ls -lR /` of all VMs in maemo infra and then we can spot any such binaries and if they are considered any violation of usage terms & licence they came with. I'm pretty sure nothing on maemo.org is '(C)Nokia' or otherwise commercial and causes a threat to maemo.org by getting published/shared or by being used despite a needed license for such usage missing. IOW: I fail to see what is it that Nokia can trade in to us in such contract for any obligations HiFo would accept in such contract - except the domain name. And the binaries at *.nokia.com that are desperately needed by users but not on maemo.org and also off the table aiui, some of them for well understood reasons (as already elaborated on, re Nokia != Adobe etc). So is it really an offense to ask if such contract is a good deal? Is it an offense to ask if we need HiFo at all and for what (suggesting that somebody comes up with a detailled answer what's further purpose of HiFo rather than attacking me for asking the question)? Woody's outbursts clearly shown in my book that HiFo might use incorrect data when evaluating if the contract is a good deal or not. I'm concerned about that.

[edit] I seriously would prefer Nokia to tell us which of the binaries are 3rd source and thus a threat to Nokia or us when we would offer them anywhere, and then Nokia would make up their mind and allow us to provide the rest which is Nokia's very own property. If HiFo's negotiations are targeted at that, I'm all happy and hope you will succeed, and community in the end will benefit at least from sustained support for the basic blobs actually owned by Nokia. Heck, I guess we (the community) even could come up with fiasco images cleaned out so no more 3rd party IP is in them. We did much worse missions-impossible before. Then we could actually start to provide working flashing for users who need to reflash their N900 (flasher already RE'ed) - something that Nokia already stopped *) to do.

*) Well, almost: http://nds2.fds-fire.nokia.com/fdp/i...ED_MR0_ARM.bin I idly wonder if the security issue that Nokia claimed had made them take down tablets-dev is fixed in this fiasco (PR1.3.1). If so, then they could've done themselves and users a favour by getting more specific about the nature of that security issue.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Was your age @ joerg and woody ??? Please. It feels like 2 educated qualified persons running naked ..

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

So just asking after comprensive reading , what exactly HIFO will do and how benifical ? What exactly are the "contracts" ? Will it be ever possible to run maemo on other devices i mean if neo900 takes momentum and in future if other projects or devices want to use maemo legaly like any other os or distro can it be used ? How exactly will neo900 will use n900 images if there are licsenced bits of nokia or affilated third parties as previously said ? Is hifo , council ,community only aimed at running the infra for nxx devices , is there any future then ?

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Nokiabot,
the closed maemo binaries are supposed to get reverse-engineered by FPTF in the long run. An intermediate solution is for users to move their legally obtained maemo fremantle firmware image to their Neo900. That's perfectly legal (afaik). FPTF is supposed to provide a script to facilitate this.
Neo900 group will not ship the device with fremantle, so there's no problem for the Neo900 group either.

BR
jOERG

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

You found one!

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

While looking at the existing bylaws, my draft for the articles of corporation and different solutions used by other foundations, I thought that we probably do not want to simply adopt the existing bylaws. There is room for improvement IMHO, especially for the council. Today, council is a commitee that shows responsible for elections, membership and administrative tasks. A council is not a requirement for foundations, but a practical way to handle duties. A requirement for almost any foundation is to have a general meeting that votes for the board. And while the board can decide on its' own about specified things, the general meeting always has to have the highest level of jurisdiction in the association (can suspend directors).
In order to get a better understanding of the structures of different associations, I sketched some basic Organigramms for your consideration.

HiFo with actual bylaws: http://i.imgur.com/JfX6U94.png

How KDE e.V. is organised: http://i.imgur.com/Y4JyoMt.png

Proposal 1: http://i.imgur.com/irRr7Xa.png

Proposal 2: http://i.imgur.com/tgLzorL.png

Please note, that in the KDE e.V. only a selected group (in our case similar to council) is seen as regular members that can vote for board. These select members cannot be voted in, but get accepted by simple majority of active members (~council). Also the supporting members have no voting rights and cannot be regular members (which I dislike, personally). "Now wait, that's no democratic at all!" - Well, true, community has no rights at all under these circumstances. But it seems to pan out right for KDE e.V., they seem to have a solid base of active members. Personally, I don't prefer their model, but it should be food for thought...
I would like to hear your comments on why you consider which model as best for us. Hopefully, we'll see some consent and can soon start forming the articles of corporation to our needs. Again, for now it's just a base structure which lacks definitions e.g. of what council should be/do.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

maybe a sidenote: in german "Vereinsrecht" an ordinary member is supposed to register to the Verein and also regularly pay a certain fee per year to support the Verein, while extraordinary members can be everything just according to what the bylaws define as "extraordinary"
It might not have been obvious from above nice useful diagrams.
note #2: generally german Vereinsrecht requires a general meeting once per year, where every ordinary member gets invited. This meeting is the highest authority in every Verein. It acknowledges the last year's work of the differnet Verein executives like cashier etc, means it nods off (or not, sometimes. A huge issue then) what has been done.

(all of the above: disclaimer AFAIK)

HTH
/j

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

AFAIK, the registering part is fully true, about the fee I doubt there's a minimum that has to be paid though.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

No, there's no minimum fee, and there's no mandatory fee either. However all this needs to get clearly defined in the bylaws, and 99.9% of bylaws expect a certain minimum fee (like maybe 5bucks/y) from members to demonstrate they are really regular members, and also to compensate for inevitable expenses of the Verein (if only for the printouts, envelopes, and postage paid to invite those members that can't get reached otherwise, for the Jahreshauptversammlung)
FWIW option #1 looks good to me, though I wonder what suggestions board is supposed to give to council (in a formal way as defined in bylaws). Particularly #1 is a commonly used scheme in german Verein.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

It should say "suggest members", I've updated the diagramm. I've made this up as an addition to self-nominations so that it may lead to more candidates. Suggestions can of course be made any time in either direction, while duties/tasks indeed have to be defined and assigned to members, commitees or groups. More below.

This was, sorry, bullsh*t. I've corrected above post accordingly, but for the record it should be mentioned again: all active members (~council) accept new ones basically by simple majority. KDE e.V. handles it this way and I put up for your consideration:

I think I made up my preference and suggest a modified KDE e.V. model:
http://i.imgur.com/lqbGNmb.png
This of course, is no official HiFo statement or recommendation, just my personal.
I'm sure this would put immediate relief to the issue of chronic shortage of candidates for thr relevant positions. With some dozens or so members who pay a minimal regular fee, like Joerg pointed out, we'd be able to gather at least the minimum of funds that's needed to keep things running. OTOH, I dislike the circumstance that those people who already invest their time and energy are supposed to addionally invest money. But there's flexibility for that too. Exceptions can be made, other contributions may count too and after all, our annual expenses are quite low, again thanks to IPHH.

Those who fear the loss of democracy from ground up (community) - this is a call for your engagement. Segregation at one end comes with the benefit of secured inclusion on the other end. And when I look at the number of voters for recent elections which were around ~100 at best, this can't really be seen as a serious issue. The benefits clearly outweigh the downsides, IMHO.
With this modell, all active members effectively get council rights. They can get involved in every decision if they desire so. Current tasks assigned to council may be handled together by all or by an assigned group, e.g. for sysadmins, mods, voting procedure, Dev groups, you name it. They may even assign extraordinary members to their group at their own discretion if desired. The result will hopefully be to have all the devoted people condensed in a position where their voice will be heard and achievements to the avail of community at large can be accomplished easier after all.

As mentioned earlier, I encourage the idea of a supporter membership and I'd even allow them voting rights as long as they're natural persons and their membership is not obviously conflicting because of third party interests.
And as life shows, the sh*t tends to happen at times... So I also encourage the idea to establish an arbitrating body, it's simply good practice for any Verein, just in case. For this purpose a honorary membership may be established that shall be awarded to select people that would qualify them for the arbitrating body. They may have voting rights in BoD-elections or not, but should be free of fees. If trouble between board and any other party within or without the foundation occurs, this commitee is there to step in and planish things without the need to go all the way through courts, where possible. I'm thinking of guys like former councilors, admins, mods...

This is nothing less than a revolution in regards to the bylaws we have now. But this move to new grounds provides chances for improvement and great opportunitys, we just have to make use of them. So PLEASE everybody share your thoughts on this and advise how to proceed.
(Yes, you too, Dave999, on topic please!)

This issue obviously is blocker for forming the bylaws and we want to make sure the e.V. is set up and the transition incl. handing over current assets is done by the end of march at the latest. As soon as we agree to a principal model, I will present more in-depth options and with some help in the german thread I hopefully will be able to pesent a proper english translation of the bylaws and additional regulations I'm actually drafting.

If you do care about community, please share your comments here or shoot a mail at me. If you're asking "Is this really nescessary?" or "Why Germany?"- well, since woody14619 left the board, we're simply lacking personell to handle core things like bank matters, filing tax papers and so on. Loosing him basically means loosing the US foundation as I see it. At least there's not much I could do about it - except supporting this transformation. And with some support by council and community, this probably is the best thing HiFo ever could do for community so far. Heck, this topic might even make it for #maemo-meeting one day. ;)

Sorry for the wall of text.
And by the way - with the contract signed, we may as well oficially be maemo e.V. :)

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Personally, I prefer a setup where all members can vote for the board and for council. If you define a member by "someone who pays a yearly fee for membership", I'm fine with that too, as long as that fee is not too high. I guess I don't want to see a situation where a very few people (4-5) are steering the Hildon Foundation. Maybe this feeling is a result of the move to a European-only board... people like me (who live outside the EU) who are interested in Maemo and the Hildon Foundation can never serve as part of the board in this scenario. That said, I fully understand and support the move to a German e.v.

Using the maemo name for the e.v is probably a non-starter, not for legal reasons (assuming we get rights to use the name), but for community politics. It was shot-down pretty early on in the process previously as some portions of the community didn't feel it was inclusive enough, and I suppose with Jolla making up more of this community now, that sentiment would only be strengthened.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Not sure if you got the model right. The idea is to pile up regular members and give them "Steering-rights". If you want to serve, become regular member. You could look at it this way: it's an upgrade for the regular members to council-status. Or you could look at it that way: Council becomes obsolete, since already everybody is in.
But again, it's no problem at all to establish a group within the regular members as a commitee to steer or handle things exactly like council does today or in any desired modification. When you look at my last diagramm, just add a circle within the green field "Regular members", cut out "Council" and paste it in the new circle. The more regular members there are, the more it may be usefull to establish that. We can also establish it now and leave it blank until the desire is there to make use of it. I don't know what's best, I'm just pointing to options.
Board only shows responsible for legal matters, handle finances, provides an office adress, stuff like that. What's new: They receive order from the majority of regular members in the general assembly.

[Edit:] So I stressed my layout skills some more... Here's another model to discuss that would include council as it is now, elected by community:
http://i.imgur.com/baDYFtr.png

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

The current system is more like the proposal 2 diagram, in that the Board is directly selected by a general election to serve for a set term, and holds general meetings publicly.

I think all of the systems have merit, and think they would all likely serve the community about equally well. I would prefer something where the general electorate have a direct vote in the leadership of the e.V. directors. In the end, the simplest model will likely be the best one, since the more complex it gets, the harder it becomes to implement (and the more arguments spawn over interpretation).

I also see no problem asking for some minimal support (say 5€/year) but note that requiring such for other actions (voting rights, etc) could become a technical challenge itself. Making other systems reliant on tracking that could be tricky to pull off, especially for existing systems not setup for it (like voting).

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Well, as for me, any honorary members or any other decision should be accepted by the community

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

With the actual bylaws, the decisions community can make today is to vote for board, council, amendments of the bylaws and referenda for the election process. Board basically shows responsible/liable for the foundation and only decides about board matters; this will not change with the e.V. All other decisions are made by council. The idea behind the KDE-model is to strengthen this group for day-to-day decisions by expansion and putting more weight to their vote (by allowing only regular members to vote). This will (hopefully) result in better integration of active members, improved organisation of relevant tasks and reduced workload for single councilors. With this model, regular members can establish commitees/groups as they seem fit (upon majority of votes) and delegate responsibility/work. Today, only 3 people do that.

If there's one thing that we need, it's active supporters (e.g. maintainers) IMHO.
Shifting voting rights from community to active/regular members means empowering active members.
I believe that's why KDE chose this model and why we should at least consider it.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

I see the point. So what about some "veto" for the community?

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Sorry I totally completely fail to see the reasoning behind this. Who are those 3 people? I'd like to get to know them! Since council FAILS to delegate/shanghai, no matter what the task. It's always COMMUNITY that picks up on a task and sometimes council can find a way to facilitate. It's NOT like council (or, to my knowledge, HiFo or techstaff) has ever rejected (nor shanghaied) community members for a task.
And PRETTY PLEASE don't tell me such stuff would reduce my workload as councilor! IT WILL NOT!.Au contraire. I can tell for sure since I've seen and whitnessed it in the difference between a council of 3 and a council of 5, with the latter being way more hassle than the former one.

Best Regards
jOERG
(council member)

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...21#post1411021

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Ok, I think I pointed out enough alternatives and viable options.
But the general estimation of HiFo-board and council seems to be to stick to the actual bylaws where possible and this seems to be the preferred model at hand; for clear arrangement, I left out the arrows for who reports whom, so here it is: board reports to the General Assembly, council reports to community.
http://i.imgur.com/oZnybf8.png
With this model, the following changes will apply to the new bylaws:

• a General Assembly will be established. As already mentioned, this is a requirement by law, it has to exist as a body as well as board. It is the highest juristication in a german Verein and usually, but not nescessarily (a commitee could do), elects board. In this case, board will be part of the General Assembly
• as a measure of attempting to keep voluntary board personell in position as long as they're willing, voting rights for board will be shifted from community to council, while board members still remain the right to vote for themselves. In order to allow such a constellation, we should make sure that there'll *always* be more council members than board members (today, it's the other way round and that feels wrong to me if it would stay like this in the new model)
• only active members from within the e.V. can apply for board

I will now prepare the bylaws accordingly in german and hopefully can provide an english translation soon.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

As already mentioned in the german thread, it seems good practice for an e.V. to not put all regulations in the bylaws, but to set up additional regulation documents. The main reason for this is that any change to the bylaws needs notary approval and has to be submitted to the registering court which means hassle and costs. This does not apply for complementary documents. Some basic regulations however, by german law, have to reside in the bylaws itself.
The bylaws have to be seen as the constitution and the regulations as jurisdiction.

For now, the only additional regulations next to the bylaws is the Community Council/Election process document. Please note that this has already been altered several times.
I'm really no expert with this, but what I've read so far, I'd suggest to keep the bylaws low on regulations and set up these complementary documents:

• election regulations (including existing regulations)
• general regulations (handling membership and internal relations, delegating duties; the election regulations may be part of this)
• board regulations (including election regulations)
• arbitration agreement

This will likely be the best solution in regards to flexibility. We then would have to separate those regulations that should be hard to change (put in the bylaws) and those that should be easy to change (put in the additional documents).
So in the end you would have to look at two documents to find out about the circumstances of a case. But this really shouldn't add complication, simplicity remains a major goal for all regulations.
For now, I will continue with the complementary documents. In case that's unwanted, they can be integrated in the bylaws any time.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Unfortunately, the above model doesn't work out. So here's an updated diagramm that also shows the additional regulations and who will be allowed to alter these:
http://i.imgur.com/78Zj4Ks.jpg
Some remarks:
- inauguration meeting = 1st General Assembly * founding members = 1st regular members
- Board, council, general assembly and community are bodys of the association, board election committee is, well, a committee with the single purpose to vote for board, nothing else.
- In order for the bylaws to be legally valid (and hold council-elections), the General Regulations Document must be in place so there basically is no real alternative to having the General Assembly to instate this.
- By german law, the initiating body of a regulations document must always remain sovereignty to change it.
- Board regulations only handles internal organisation, it does not affect other members. For the sake of boards seamless actionability, they should hold sovereignty over this doc.
- Bylaws always have priority over complementary documents.

The documents are almost ready (in german language):
Bylaws: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/AMabik4zeD
General Regulations Document: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/imtFYfpUKK
Board Regulations Document: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/uwQXMscA2n
Arbitration Agreement: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/ycnusfXYOe

Please review and help with the english translation at the bottom of each webpad.
Thank you.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Should the translation be straight below the text? I translated the agreement's initial part that way. And left both versions [[ sex / gender ]] to avoid the political / ideological discussions :)

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Exactly, just like that.
The Arbitration Agreement is optional and the least important one for now.
It would be great if we could have the bylaws and General Regulations Document ready first.
Many thanks.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Ok, we found out a board election committee means unwanted admin overhead and is somewhat hard to put into practice, so we settled for this option: http://i.imgur.com/BNUVs23.png.
I have updated the relevant documents:
Satzung/Bylaws: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/AMabik4zeD
Vereinsordnung/General Regulations: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/imtFYfpUKK
Vorstands-Geschäftsordnung/Board Regulations: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/uwQXMscA2n
They alreday had a first review by an attorney and are now being finalized in conjunction with him, so some minor edits still may occur. For now, we're looking into how to instate the council without the need for regular elections. But all basic things are set. The most pressing issue now is to get a decent english translation that we can publish so all founders can review them. Your help is highly appreciated.

Another thing that needs to be mentioned is that this transition comes with quite some costs. But unfortunately, we don't have much choice since Woody resigned. We'd be lucky if dissolving the US foundation (incl. filing taxes for 2012-2014) and registering the e.V. incl. notary fees, attorney, postage, (translator?) will not exceed 1000 €. We really don't like to see money being eaten away by such costs and all our efforts go towards keeping those as low as possible. But we believe this money is well-spent in order to provide vital grounds for our community, especially for active members. Rights will be shifted towards Council and regular members, which will hopefully lead to a better relation between council and board.

Unfortunately, because of the translation issue, the announced date (tue, march 04) for the kickoff meeting will hardly be sustainable. Shifting it a few days is no problem though as long as we can agree on a new date. But we're still lacking at least one more founder. And in order to keep delays and risks through postal service minimal (bylaws have to be originally signed by every founder), we are aiming to find nearby mates. So far, founders reside in Kaiserslautern and Hamburg in Germany, and Helsinki or Järvenpää in Finland. Ever wanted to meet a fellow in your area? - Here's your chance... ;) Would be nice to also have one or two "spares" at hand, in case someone won't be able to make it.
If you're a well-known contributor on maemo.org and are able to support the movement as a director or founder, please step up.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Here's a diagramm that should represent the whole fundamental structure of the e.V.:
http://i.imgur.com/XQFJhy8.jpg
Everybody able to vote for a body is also qualified as a candidate for said body as long as he meets requirements (karma++). These requirements are now easier to adjust.

Some info on the kickoff-meeting and how a new council will be instated:
- Founders accept the bylaws and general regulations, then vote for 3 directors and 5 councilors.
- Directors accept board regulations and appoint chair, secretary and treasurer.
- Councilors appoint chair and secretary.
If nothing else, that was it.

The new bylaws basically adopt the parts that handle council elections (some edits done to 11) + 12) of today's election regulations. Nevertheless, it is legitimate to instate this body by an election held in the founding meeting as a stopgap-solution until regular elections can be held. This may as well be done later on in a regular election, but would result in a situation where we don't have a council in place. Since holding an election takes 5 weeks at least, we are aiming to fill these positions by founders and plan to hold regular elections in the usual intervall, which AFAIK would be june, at latest. We hope this is an acceptable way for community to handle this issue for the period of transition.

It will be possible for a single member to hold positions in two or more bodys, so a member can be director and councilor at the same time. Unfortunately, only chemist and juiceme are willing to continue their position as councilors, so we need at least 2 more (assuming nieldk would as well accept as councilor).

The kickoff-meeting can be held as soon as everybody involved had the chance to look into the bylaws. The date is highly dependant on the availability of the english translation. We hope to get this done by community in order to keep expenses low. So if you're able to understand both, english and german, join the party:
Satzung/Bylaws: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/AMabik4zeD
Vereinsordnung/General Regulations: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/imtFYfpUKK
Vorstands-Geschäftsordnung/Board Regulations: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/uwQXMscA2n

For the kickoff-meeting, end of next week or tuesday, march 11 seems more realistic. The date will be set as soon as at least 7 founders incl. 3 directors and 5 councilors are found and agreed upon it.
Interested? - Join the club!

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

7 Founders? I what is a founder in this particular case? regular community members?

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Dave, look at the diagram again. Where do you see "regular community members"? Stick to the terminology used and get your question right (seems a verb is missing too) and you should be able to get the answer yourself. If still not the case, post your rephrased question again and I might have an answer for you.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Should I be worried? Is this some elite project for "some members"?
I see reguolar mamber, associated mamber and don't like the smell of it.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Definitely!

No, every associated member can become regular member, in the kickoff meeting or later.

REALLY?

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Some more info on the proceeding:
At least 7 contractually capable EU residents or citizens are required to sign the bylaws by hand and to vote for board and council. While the kickoff meeting is not limited to 7, we want to focus on the directors and councilors, since these are the crucial members. And of course we want to make sure to have a clean, disciplined meeting that concentrates on the nescessary steps which will be noted and published later in the meeting minutes.

If more than 7 people are attending the meeting, still only 7 will sign the bylaws in order to keep logistical efforts low. But everybody attending the meeting (the first General Assembly) will be a founder and therefore automatically be the first regular members. Later on, when the e.V. is operable, associated members can apply for regular membership, which will be granted by the board. Unless you're a serial thread derailer, there's no reason why board wouldn't do so.

For the councilors, we're aiming to fill positions by people fulfilling todays' and future requirements (Karma 100+), but that's not an obligation for the transition period. For the next council elections the usual requirements are in effect. Candidates for council don't have to be regular members. If they got elected, they are free to stay associated member or become a regular member.

For the next board elections, candidates have to be regular members.

If still anything should be unclear or you have any concerns, please holler.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

Low and myself did try to translate the articles - someone native should read over it again! https://etherpad.mozilla.org/AMabik4zeD

Dave, don't pull your hair on that - the founding process is one thing, after that anyone being a passive member (registered to maemo.org) can apply for active membership. There was the need to keep it split as we cannot file all maemo.org accounts as active members by default.
What changes in the basics is that the board will not be elected by all maemo.org members with enough karma but by all active members of the association.
That way, who wants to get involved with association duties can join it, who does not want to can still take part in electing the Council.

Afaik the only limitations we have with this is that Directors need to be EU residents. But as the Board is ment to serve the community as legal representative and our legal issues reside in the EU this is probably not that a big issue anyways.

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

chemist and myself did try to translate the General Regulations - someone native should read over it again:
https://etherpad.mozilla.org/imtFYfpUKK

Now only the Board Regulations need translation:
https://etherpad.mozilla.org/uwQXMscA2n

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

All done! I am done as well!

I translated the Boards' Internal Regulations within the last couple of hours. All three documents are now translated by Germans to readable English but we as not being native might put some phrases the wrong way round. Please read through and correct as applicable (don't delete, only strike pls).

Thank You!

Re: moving Hildon Foundation to a german e.V.
 

I have reviewed the english translations.
I have no legal background so I cannot comment on that aspect, but the language of the regulations is OK.