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

I'm never convenient with stuff like this, rather concerned when having to deal with haters like you.

insulting again. Now that I'm in quite a similar position (you put me in) like Rob, I've learned that some things are nescessary indeed, no matter how much you want another one.
And falsely assuming this is a oneway road where HFC "was made to be" MCC (this already hurts to my ears).
And what second referendum exactly are you talking about?

Oh, is that REALLY so? Here's what Mentalist Traceur had in mind when he announced the referendum:
(Sidenote regarding legacy MCC rules applying to HFC after referendum: honestly, my understanding when writing that referendum was precisely that that would no longer be the case. If it is, there's very little point to even having that referendum. If that's what I thought it was doing, I wouldn't have even bothered writing it at the time, because most of the mess it's supposed to fix remains a mess, under that interpretation. However, I don't have the energy to argue about this right now, so whatever. My interpretation is not the common one by now anyway.)

and again here:
Unrelated: I am really tempted to make a post with a poll asking how many people sincerely believed when the HiFo bylaws were written, that the HiFo council was NOT supposed to replace MCC.
(the next few lines being pretty interesting too, telling a lot about joergs err, mindset I believe)
I didn't exactly find the part where joergs interpretation was taken as Council decision or even granted by any kind of vote. Please help out.

And after reading (who's done) latest edits to the wiki for said referendum, it all makes sense in a way though.
This speaks for itself, I believe: http://wiki.maemo.org/index.php?titl...71&oldid=51171

joerg, upon own discretion, turned "We need to set up election rules for this new body (Hildon Foundation Council) and transform Maemo Community Council to Hildon Foundation Council." into "We need to set up election rules for this new body (Hildon Foundation Council) and *eventually* Maemo Community Council accepts the duties of Hildon Foundation Council."

MCC was clear about this, nevertheless:
"...forming a Council with similar rules including a few tweaks to adjust to new practicalities; instead of being a Nokia conduit.
This will allow the two bodies to be aligned for the current and any future term. Hildon Foundation will therefore be left with one Council and a Board of Directors. In future this shall result in a single election performed for the unified council.
We believe the above is an important step for moving the Community forward with a unified Council in the post-Nokia era. So:
MCC hereby declares the bodies of HFC and MCC to be one single body in perpetuity.

No, I said council election rules are 100% same, nothing more.

Where exactly did *I* suggest that? - I obviously suggested to keep Council in form of a legal body being part of MC eV, just like expressed in the bylaws. To be clear, I am still in favor of option #4 I pointed out here:

4.) Council adheres to MC eV bylaws, becomes a body of MC eV (while the individuals may not) that can have limited power and responsibility as defined in the bylaws.

but now that we're talking about it... I start to tend to think that abolishing council might actually be not that much of a bad idea indeed.

I never said that Council is flawed per se. Please read my post again, I actually said "Generally nothing would be wrong with Council when it would not clearly conflict with MCeV Rules"
Already get it, probably?

Amen my lord. You are the ultimate wisdom and no one shall ever raise his voice against joerg, since he is the one only true emperor errr saviour of maemo. ROFL...

It is more than obvious that you, by all means, are acting against HiFo as well as MC eV (and all that it entails).
And I find it hard to stand that your resignation as councilor shall be executed due to removal of your signature. Your disrespect towards either party knows no boundries it seems. At least give your council-collegues the honour to put a valid resignation somewhere, in case you're lacking the backbone to do so publicly. Otherwise I will ask Council to discard you for boycot/sabotage/subversive activities if nobody else does.

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

Where is your god now?

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

""ehrm read again... smart *** (the first time you asked for it, this time it was fmg)""
so why don't you point at that "first time [i] asked for it"?
conveniently evading the main topic where you are calling me a liar and suggest my reputation sank to zero, while now you edited your post to completely remove that passage? THAT's smart ***.

btw did you notice the huge¡ number of community members commenting on this thread? Never mind, mission accomplished, you killed community which silently turned away from all this mess. Good luck with your elitist GA that gets appointed by a BoD which in turn is "elected" by that GA. I will be honestly amazed to find more members in GA than posts in this , any time. Which automatically moots my suggestion to limit the number of regular members in MCeV, alas it doesn't guarantee those members were willing to cooperate with the only true maemo community, rather that feeling like the new elite that now does everything different and better.
My condolences to the maemo community, probably it been inevitable you had to die.

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

chemist: come on man, is it really needed to put my words out of the context just for the sake of the fight? What are you fighting for with me?!? Read my post again, please http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=51. I was just stating what is my view of what options we have. Not necessarily the correct vision, but still.

So, me asking questions and trying to find a solution to the current state makes me joerg's puppet? Put yourself together, please.

Or it is because I was the one to tell you that you miserably failed with your role of being the maintainer of cssu-stable? Are you really angry on that still? Yes, you failed, and that is a fact in my book. No matter if that makes you angry or not. But that is completely irrelevant to the matter of the thread.

Anyway, I did my try to lower the "temperature" and to have some productive talk. Sure, I have failed. Is it me to blame or not does not matter, but for sure I won't participate in such kind of conversations again. Do as you think is right guys, wish you luck.

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

Quick message...
I do not understand anything about roles of these different organizations. And please, do not throw around references to previous state of things (because I do not understand it, either), such as "merge", "replace" or whatever. And do not attack other members, their personalities, or previous posts. This thread is becoming too long; a wiki page summarizing the information would be helpful.
Trying to say aloud what I know:
* HiFo is legal, non-profit organization based in USA.
* e.V. is legal organization going to be based in Germany. It has to have seven (or more) founders (EU residents) who will be ordinary members.
e.V. and HiFo could co-exist. Or e.V. could replace HiFo. Or HiFo could stay as it, without any e.V.
One stated problem was that HiFo's accounts are 'frozen' due to bank not accepting new board members. How is it going to be resolved?
About EU citizen-or-permanent-resident restriction... Just for that, I am going to look for a way to become EU citizen. Being a citizen of Finland would be brilliant :) But that's a long-term goal.
Block diagrams would be helpful. I can remember that there were some elections on Maemo.org in the past, but I cannot remember anything about them.
Best wishes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Per aspera ad astra...

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

Just one point, the E.V. is not a corporation, it's an "association". Think of a hobby club where the membership elects people to run the club.

In a corporation the employees can't tell the BoD what to do, rather the other way around (through the CEO/president.) HiFo was/is a corporation essentially (my understanding, I may be wrong there.) The EV is not. The membership ("General Assembly") runs the show completely.

It sounds like the MCeV is or will soon become a reality, so the issue lies around:

1. what the role of the CC is (and it sounds like it is currently much as it is now, and for now until or unless a referendum is conducted by the GA to change that). and

2. who makes up the GA (it's all maemo garage accounts right now?)

This is very melodramatic. Anyone who wants to be a member of the GA, could be, right? So anyone who wants to have a say in the community can quite easily do that. There's no "new elite", the GA makes the rules. Some people in the "community" may decide not to join the GA for whatever reason. They can contribute in other ways, or maybe don't care about elections, or any other topic that the GA may decide to vote on-that's up to them.

Also, the community won't die. I remember people thinking that when HiFo was formed. It didn't happen then, it won't happen now either. It might, maybe, be able to move forward on several fronts, one of which being given the rights to use some of Nokia's trademarks legally. Hopefully it will clarify responsibilities, liabilities, organizational structures, finances, etc...

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

That's not true. There is a clause that allowed the Foundation Council to call for a re-election of the Board. That was the "fail safe" put in, and the only power Council had over HiFo. That was also the reason the "two Council" needed to be merged, so that Council could exercise this power as needed.


That "idea" was in the head of exactly one person. HiFo was intended from the start to be a group that fulfilled the role of legally holding items and taking actions needed to continue operations. That included delegating roles for upkeep on things it's legally responsible for (like servers) and negotiation legal contracts with parties involved (IPHH, Nokia, and others).

The idea that it was nothing but a bank holder is frankly absurd on it's face.

Actually, they are basically the same thing. The only difference is that German law (correctly IMHO) separates NFP groups and LLC type corporations. In the US, all things are corporations, be that the neighborhood little league club or Microsoft.

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

A fine question, which sadly goes unanswered. I see no reason to limit the power of the GA.

Again, I think there is a misconception here.

When HiFo was put into place, there was a desire to make the transition as small as possible for the community. It was seen as a "good idea" at the time to leave the Council/Community system the way it was. But to have the same thing with HiFo/Community seemed unwieldy. Let's hold a referendum every time we want to take any action?

The compromise was to "split the bill", giving election rights for Board to the community, and a legal "reset button" to Council, while allowing HiFo to be rather autonomous. Legal matters and actions would be communicated between Council and the Board, but there was no direct "power" of one over the other.

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

Which is the problem. If you think you're going to have problems with people giving their names to be part of a body of people to vote on those with legal liability, where do you plan on finding a group willing to give their names and be legally liable for things, and have no say or control over what they're being held liable for?

It helps the community by keeping the lights on. There needs to be a legal entity to take responsibility for these items. That could be a single person, or an e.V., or a corporation. You may be able to pull off having servers dangling out there is space for a while, an even have illegal things going on (ala Silk Road). But we've seen time and time again where that ends, and it's never pretty.

Because there are other legal items that it needs to do. Filing tax forms, renewing trade marks, handling requests from governments and other companies.

Tell me: If someone in tech staff were to post something they thought was legal, and it turns out it was not (just randomly, lets say something like an Angry Birds app). When Rovio comes after those servers, it's not going to go after "the community" or "Council" or even "GA". It looks for the legal entity responsible for the servers and goes for them. And there is always someone legally liable. Minimally the company or individual providing internet access to the server if the "owner" can't be found.

As for TechStaff and sysops not doing something requested if they feel it's "bad for the community", that was the core of an argument about device images. Nokia claimed it's images were copyright and needed to be removed. TechStaff bulked at removing them (someone was claiming they were "all FOSS") and they were vital to community. Legally though, we had to remove them. Nokia was nice about looking the other way for months while we had that debate internally.

Who will put themselves in a position of being liable for that, while having only the job of "cashier", and no say in what's going on?

Which is exactly what HiFo is, with the exception that HiFo is elected by the masses, where the e.V. board would be elected by the GA (in this case Council) only. GA elects the Board, and can force a new election. That is it's main power. Council has that same power over HiFo, except that it must potentially give up it's own reign at the same time by calling joint elections.

True, but with a caveat. There will also be times that the Board gets legal requests for action from outside, and in those cases, it must have authority to take the actions needed to sustain the community legally. And while that may include consulting Council, at times there are legal limits on who one can tell about things as they are required to do. (Like contract negotiations, some court orders, etc.)

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

Understand, in most countries "real non-profits" are in fact corporations. This is the case in most of the English speaking world.

HiFo is, by law, a non-profit corporation. A corporation is one of the only "entities" besides a "natural person" that can legally hold rights and/or take legal actions. Even most townships and cities are "incorporated" for this purpose.

And things are not that different in Germany. In order to have signers on a bank account, they must all be present at a local bank to show ID and sign for that right. This is the same issue with HiFo trying to add other Board members: None are local enough to do this.