Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

You're missing one fact: I'm not the only one in council who's bound to obey maemo council rules. win7mac can suggest to ignore these all day long (funny enough in first post of this thread he suggested a referendum to fix the discrepancies between maemo council rules and his 'general assembly' supposedly being the new council with all the duties and competences that so far were council's), it doesn't matter how long or how often per day he claims that MCeV 'general assembly' > council, it's not true, and NOBODY in council may follow this point of view. Voting me out of council doesn't change anything in this regard.
There's only ONE way to change maemo council rules: REFERENDUM. And I personally have my doubts about success chances of a referendum that's abolishing community voting about any maemo-related stuff based on maemo council and voting rules, and replacing it by a 'general assembly of regular members'. Where nobody can become 'regular member' without approval by some dudes inside that MCeV, and it may even cost money to be a regular member, as has been suggested in here. That's something *I* consider thoroughly non-democratic, elitist, almost totalitarian, and absolutely not "the point of contact for community to engage and show responsible or operate on communitys' behalf; democracy becomes live here" ( http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...70&postcount=1 ) We don't need such new place, we already allow everybody to show responsible or operate on communitys' behalf, simply by e.g. showing up in council meetings and discussing stuff with everybody openly there. No approval required. No fees charged. No forms to fill in.

The whole thing consisting of maemo community, council, and HiFo/MCeV been meant to work on cooperation and assuming good will. Win7mac is absolutely not demonstrating any good will when he tries to turn the general assembly - that been a concern from beginning and supposed to act in a way so it doesn't conflict with existing democratic structures of maemo (incl referenda and council elections) and the existing council (which manages such referenda and polls and executes community's will and propagates it to other entities like HiFo) - into something that replaces/obsoletes the community-elected council and is run by a few approved and paying ones (sidenote: do you think that's fair regarding poor students and community members who live in countries that have no access to paypal?).

...supposed to work on good will, cooperation and simple common sense: HiFo is liable so of course HiFo has last word as soon as legality of anything is the reason to voice up. As I always said: "HiFo executes what community told council is the thing to do, and council tells HiFo, and HiFo obeys (unless it's illegal). Same common sense applies when some issue like the "hosting of pirated stuff" happens. Council is supposed to deal with this and to stop it immediately, no matter of liability. When HiFo gets to know about any such issue, they tell council to immedately deal with it. That's even been agreed upon between HiFo and council shortly after community received the servers from Nokia, see HiFo meeting minutes. Of course when council would ignore HiFo or would refuse to act accordingly, then HiFo is free to take any other measures needed, like approaching TMO maintainer or maemo sysops directly, or even asking IPHH to take down the server and hand it over to HiFo.
What HiFo and MCeV are NOT supposed to do is replacing the existing organizational procedures, rules, and entities.

Best Regards
jOERG

Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

That is EXACTLY what it's supposed to do if nescessary, you just happen to experience a huge misapprehension of what a Verein can be in reality.

Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

What a Verein can be is totally irrelevant here. Sorry to inform you about the fact that the world is not adjusting to meet your daydreams. When you want to change anything in the way maemo community and organizational enties work, go REFERENDUM as you suggested by yourself in your post#1. That's the only way the existing and established rules allow for changing them. Nothing you come up with, no lies and no dirt you throw my direction will change that.

edit: to be utterly clear, I'm talking about, among others but for example and particularly, the red bold one in

Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

Just to have said something on this topic and give some kind of newsflash to the discussion:

What joerg refers to as rules are assignments or even obligations and the election rules. But, the only rules council has are the council election rules, nothing more nothing less.

Assignments or obligations are matter of negotiation with people up the chain of command.
That used to be Nokia and Nokia's Community Contact, is HiFo (which never cared much what council pulled off as long as it is legal and funded) and soon will be MCeV.

Quick statement: I am not going to push any changes to council rules by circumventing the community, those rules might need an update though.


Some facts:
Yes, MCeV can alter council rules without permission of garage users (the community).
Yes, Win7mac did push the eV idea forward, after consulting endless times with board, council and the community about how to push it and in which direction and first most what to push (yes, it started with looking for the right type of entity). Joerg was asked for input on more than one occasion.

Now, it is arguably that MCeV is able to change those rules but why should they be changed by MCeV anyway. We are not going to dismiss the Council, we want the "general community" (garage) to participate. People who might want to participate more than delegating their opinion by voting council can join the MCeV. Joerg says board can block new members from joining, yes, it can but only as far as the general assembly and the council agree. The general assembly is a security measure to not have a power-grab by becoming member of the board. The real power remains with the members (general assembly) at all times.

So why is it not garage user-base?

We discussed that possibility and decided against it because of various reasons. If we decide on a member fee all garage accounts would need to pay that fee too. We would need to have all garage users fill our (yet to be drafted) application form. Not, paying users would need to be sorted out from elections as they do not meet the requirement to be a member (pay the fee). And so on...

Hope this shed some light in this tunnel.

For the personal issues between some users here, if this is taking you a calculator... let me do the math - 3-1=2 5-1=4 (linearly dependent), board needs to agree on all occasions or is unable to put things through and one council member has increased his power from 1/5 to 1/4.

This alone is already harming the community to an extend that we are unable to buffer easily in the current state. How? This is an ongoing fight for a while now and first we lost our secretary+vice-treasurer (Craig HiFo), then we loose our treasurer (Niel MCeV), again. That is what it is now, sadly, now it is on you guys (you as in reader) to decide what you gonna do about it in the future.

Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

Also one main problem of automatically including Garage members as MCeV members is the current situation where we do not know if a Garage member is active or not, there are lots of people who have just left and never bothered to close their accounts. :(

Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

Another forum I used to follow a while ago solved that problem by closing all accounts with no posts who have not logged in for more than 18 months. Not just willy-nilly, there was a warning and a 3 moths period to log in and/or post before your account was closed.

Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

In a similar method, why not just exclude people who have no Garage and/or TMO activity for a set period of time. I don't feel closing the accounts are a good move as it would discourage some devs from returning should they so wish.

Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

Yes, and I pointed to the problem of general assembly not being compatible with maemo rules from very beginning.None of those reasons beng relevant, since garage is the only valid electorate. Those are the people who donated the funds you hold and now you decide to tell them they are basically obsolete and there's another place to go now? Great! That's where you failed.
Heck, btw I even was the one who came up with the *idea* of an eV originally. Sorry for that. I explained that one of the major problems with e.V is to integrate the electorate aka community. I did multiple times even, for win7mac, hours and hours in exhausting irc queries, even when I told him I'm tired and have no time.

Finally Win7mac *swore* that the eV bylaws are ONEHUNDRED PERCENT COMPATIBLE to maemo rules. I asked again during eV foundation meeting, I think I even gave my "yes" only under provisio of this statement being true.
Now I'm "sabotaging" and "toxic" when I tell you you messed it up.
A siddenote: Nokia never had a saying about council, so why should eV? Particularly when win7mac in his post#1 clearly explains that it makes no sense to simply replace Nokia by MCeV. This is doubleplus-nonconclusive.
The whole thing is so messed up I can't find the right words, first you create a eV and bylaws contrary to what you been told they need to be. Then you explain that it is the only way for maemo to survive, and based on that you turn complete established maemo democratic system top-down. a "why should we" is silly excuse for the naive, and actually you make that statement moot with further explanations in very same post.

good luck with your elitist group of paying members. Take maemo to wherever you want, I give up on defending what maemo community once been and what made it prosper. Don't count on me anymore.
Welcome to the decade of emperor chemist.

/j

irrelevant footnote: how is an inactive garage member ANY problem? You don't say your 2/3 majority is 2/3 of known members, do you? USUALLY elections are counted as "percent" of valid votes.
another irrelevant footnote: why needs eV more than the foundation members, and maybe half a dozen reasonable "spares", to have that dang general assembly? You could have designed your bylaws so the eV is acting exactly like it's supposed to: as a long term executive executing what community decides, via the "age old" proven-to-work maemo democratic system, incl council elections and referenda. That e.V as asset owner has the power to do whatever you like does not mean you're also entitled to do so, nobody gave you a mandate for this.

PS: in a former post I said "I don't see any power grab, only one member sufffering severe misconception about nature of things" OWTTE. I admit I've been wrong, this more and more looks like a veritable coup d'etat and I consider HiFo handing over assets to e.V being illegal under these conditions, and to cover my own rear (yes, even I could get sued for THIS when i'd agree or would simply ignore it) I decalre my veto to this particular plan to "restructure" maemo organization and transfer of assets from HiFo to that particular e.V.

Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

You are repeating yourself, and again you are claiming that there is something besides election rules . So if this is about the election rules why are you starting a flamewar for it? Why call people names and why even bother? We could have left council out of the whole eV idea, but that was nothing we wanted to do. So here we are, you complaining about a future where active community members have more power than idle community members.

We can have a look in the future how to get council election rules properly outside of eV, be aware that this could mean that council looses its current abilities in regard to eV (we tried to, maybe you have an idea that is keeping it liable, note that active participation in the eV needs the general meeting in control).

So what can you come up with instead of blaming and flaming people, right now? It is understood that you do not like it this way, but there is nothing you can do about eV coming your way apart of blocking everything - this will end at some point as neither you nor council owns this place.

So stop getting personal, win7 is trying to explain it and clear off questions that arise from your very loud complaints. It would help if you stop calling people liars, too.

Sidenote: having the council elected by a user-base outside the eV did also need to define that user-base within the eV (must be under general meeting control,again), there are laws we need to apply to and that was as close as we could get (by asking a lawyer on input on exactly these issues). If you have any idea on how to change it within applicable law - share it with us!

Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

Thanks! (and sorry for late feedback - I was busy away for a few days).

So, do I understand correctly, that now we (as in Community) are just waiting for the work and formalities of transferring all assets to MC eV (this month, hopefully), and then, for announcement about a request form that we need to fill in, for being accepted as Regular Members?

If yes:
1. When and who will decide on final method to keep inactive members out of General Assembly?

Or, do we need some referendum/voting to finalize new MV eV rules?*

*(sorry joerg, I know you have, surely, much to repeat about it, but not asking you - this question is aimed at win7mac)?

If yes:

1a. When this vote is expected?

Or, are there some roadblocks, that need to be passed along the way?

If yes:

1b: What are they, and what plans to overcome them we have now?
---

Sorry if it was answered somewhere before - I think it deserve clarification, as NielDK's resignation and re-resignation caused some confusion. For example, half of the:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...7&postcount=14

...Doesn't seem to apply now (as we don't have less than 3 MC eV board now...).

/Estel

Re: Open letter: Community, Council, Board and the MC eV
 

Yes, that is the plan.


These things are under discussion.
We have Meamo Council meeting again tonight, 20:00 UTC on irc channel #maemo-meeting, so please join in!
(I have not seen you there even as I know you are a former Council member. You do of course know that it is an open meeting, participation of The Community is encouraged...?)


True. There is no urgent need for elections now.