[Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Since a few days ago we have been on our own and having a body that it's main function is to communicate with Nokia no longer serves a purpose. Another body with similar functionality is however provisioned by the ByLaws of the Hildon Foundation. We need to set up election rules for this new body (Hildon Foundation Council) and transform Maemo Community Council to Hildon Foundation Council.

The Maemo Community Council election rules ( http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...ection_process ) are a good base to start with, but they have a drawback: While there is a provision to avoid unelected members for less than 5 members, this provision does not cover the actual number five resulting in all 5 candidates to be appointed councillors (what has currently happened). This should be corrected and the clause "If fewer than 5 candidates stand for election, the 3 with the most votes are elected to the council. " must be changed to "...fewer than or equal to five...". For the same reason, the clause "If there are fewer than 3 candidates when the nominations close, the election cannot be held. " must be changed to "...fewer than or equal to three...".

Thus, a referendum is called with the following question:

In order to repair special cases in MCC rules, and bring them into alignment with HFC rules, the following: (MCC Rule List*) Shall become (HFC Rule List*), and the Maemo Community Council will from now on be transformed into Hildon Foundation Council. Yes or No?

*For the full list of changes between MCC Rule List and HFC Rule List see: http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...les_referendum

(Since this referendum should be resolved before the upcoming Council elections, if it passes it will apply to the upcoming election.)

[Posted by Mentalist Traceur on behalf of Council, credit to qwazix for writing the actual post text.]

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

No changes to first post pending.

After having mailing list troubles (many thanks to warfare (Falk Stern) for fixing it) referendum finally sent to community mailing list at 22:02:58 UTC on 2013-03-24.

- Edit 2013-03-28 -

This post is a helpful summary of what this referendum means.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

This thread deserves a bump.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Not a single post from anyone ? I agree that Maemo Community Council should be trasnsformed into Hildon Foundation Council.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Complete community fatigue. Nonstop politics, interminable long posts, drama, more plot points & characters than a daytime soap opera, etc. have probably burned everyone completely out & left most folks with no desire to even look at another political thread.

Good time to stage a coup, while the population is politically disengaged.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

It's hard for me to write anything. I think that we only need one coucil - connected with maemo and this community, as there are no other things to council at the moment and no other things to talk to HiFo board at the moment.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

it was hard for me to but have to suggest/write something as its for the future of Maemo Community. I also think the same. Maemo Community Council is enough. May be i'm wrong but 2 councils are not really needed.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

I'll bump the thread with this message: http://youtu.be/g9Dgip2w5qs?t=2m20s

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

I was always under the impression there was only one "council". The name doesn't bother me, whether it stays MCC or is called HFC, but only one council is needed at this time IMO.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

What fw190 said.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

The main issue here is that because of HiFo's by-laws, SD69 was claiming that the current Council is the Maemo Community Council with no powers over HiFo.

By bringing MCC in line as HiFo Council, such arguments become void and the Council remains as before only now it definitely has the power to call for elections for HiFo's Board. There will still be only 1 Council acting for the Community not multiple Councils.

Along the way there are 2 proposed amendments too that if there are less than 5 candidates then a new election is called but the amendment seeks to make it if there are even exactly 5 candidates, not all become unelected appointees. Similar for a situation of 3 candidates.

Think of this referendum as a way to iron out any loopholes in Council regulations so that Council always remains on the side of the Community and isn't hijacked by a few vested interests :)

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

FOA what will the HFC do? What'll be its competences?

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

The HFC will do what the Community Council did, but will report to/liaise with the Hildon Foundation Board, as the Community Council liaised with Nokia.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

To be clear: This referendum is not to create a separate Council, or cause 2 Councils to exist.

IMHO, There were never 2 Councils. This proposal is to fix the MCC voting rules so they:

A> Do what the community probably wanted them to do (elections or extensions, not appointments in 2 special cases)

B> Cause rules for the MCC and HFC elections to match when it comes to issues related to time frames, number of nominees standing, and special case handling.

This also has the effect of the community approving that they also believe that Council (MCC), which worked with Nokia, is in fact the same type of group they want once Nokia is out of the picture.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

That seems a bit more than cosmetic. Tried to follow the IRC log of the meeting that resulted in much heated debate (SD69 vs woody vs joerg_rw, now closed thankfully), saying it was confusing is understatement. But if the question is put in this way:

(MCC Rule List*) Shall become (HFC Rule List*), and the Maemo Community Council will from now on be transformed into Hildon Foundation Council. Yes or No?

the transformation part seems added and not worth discussing, while the chat logs make it seem that there is a bit more happening in the background, like Nokia representative having a say if MCC elections would fail (no candidates etc) vs no such thing since it will be now HFC? Is this referendum _only_ changing that single case of 3/5 (easily fixed by having additional member announcing his candidacy in those two cases to avoid problematic number), or was something skipped?

edit: don't want to fuel conspiracy theories, but if we just wanted to fix 3/5 candidates issue, we don't need that 'transforms to XYZ', no? We could keep the name/functions/other rules that apply...

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

The differences in ruleset for elections are highlighted in http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...les_referendum, as mentioned in post #1.

MCC accepting these and other HiFo rules as applicable to Council transforms the MCC into HFC, with all the rights and liabilities towards HiFo, and same time cutting last links to Nokia on this level.
Since Council can't do this on own power, it needs a referendum so community approves this process.

/j

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

The changes are slightly more than that...
As noted in the top post, the details of what's changing are on the wiki page. Note how the lower part has words highlighted in bold where changes are slated to occur. That is what you're voting on with this referendum.

"That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet."

The name you call Council can be changed, as like everything, it's community driven. Many here simply call it "Council", when it's full title is "Maemo Community Council". Most care more about the function than the name, and the desire of this change is to allow the function of Council to remain the same.

Technically, to give Council the legal rights to do certain things, it needs to have among it's name(s) "Foundation Council". This referendum (and another patch documented in the ByLaws) helps put things in line so that Council having that additional title make logical sense.

There's no "conspiracy" to change anything, or take anything from the community. In fact, the end goal is to give more power to the community, in part by giving the elected representatives of Council more say in things they traditionally did not have in the past.

Edit: And... Joerg_rw beat me to it... :)

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

By an hour... :/

I did check the link that was given, but discussion on IRC seemed more concerned in how to get rid of MCC with its ruleset as it caused some headache. Why not ask the referendum question in two parts then if it changes nothing _except the 3/5 rule_:

1. (MCC Rule List*) Shall become (HFC Rule List*). Yes/No

2. The Maemo Community Council will from now on be known/titled as 'Hildon Foundation Council', without any change to rules governing it (i.e. all previously set rules that would apply to Maemo Community Council will be still valid for the entity with the new name), all previous rights/responsibilities <insert more legalese along these lines as you will>, in essence, people putting this up for vote are changing just the name and by no means invalidate previously set up legal framework for that entity. Yes or No?

Somehow "transforming MCC to HFC" without definition of what transforming means (and also retroactively? Would previously set up things that were about MCC work with "transformed" MCC, or would we hear: this is not MCC, so does not apply?)

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

SIGH, the rules are virtually identical, but HFC will follow new HFC rules (which are basically a part of the HiFo bylaws) and not the old MCC rules anymore. So your whole point 2 is misleading and not to the point. For a name change Council wouldn't need a referendum.
Identical, except the highlighted parts plus additional stuff formerly simply not existing for MCC (like, for example, HFC and BoD both can call for an election of both entities in sync). Probably due to legal reasons the HiFo bylaw hasn't defined MCC and MCC's rules as HiFo's Council, but defined it anew under the term HFC with slightly changed name and basically identical rules. BoD already accepted MCC as their council in first meeting, so the crux of the matter is MCC becomes HFC now ("transforms into HFC"), while we try our very best to keep the spirit and rules like they always been since invention of MCC, just that we are moving our focus away from Nokia towards HiFo and claim all the new powers the Council has towards HiFo that it never had towards Nokia for obvious reasons. The 5/3 amendment is only a a minor matter we do since we're already at it.
Since one entity can't follow two concurrent rulesets defining this entity (even when they were 100% identical, not only 99.99%), we run this referendum to let our community transform us, the MCC, into the HFC. This gets accomplished by you voting that the suggested new HFC rules shall be the rules the Council will follow from now on.

What I'd want to get checked though is the binding of future HFC rule changes to a referendum, this needs to be kept for HFC rules (and probably for complete HiFo rules of which HFC rules are a subset). Haven't read the HiFo bylaws yet, regarding that.

Anyway I agree that the referendum text should more clearly mention this logical switch from MCC to HFC rules, since that is the essential meaning of this whole action. Likewise the wiki page should get augmented to include in the new version all the parts of HiFo bylaws relevant for council.

/j

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Mr. Chairman, I move to close debate and call the question! (not that I am against debate, it is I'm for getting this done and moving forward.)

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

a referendum has to get held according to the very rules we're discussing here. According to those rules this discussion period is 4 weeks.

Do you suggest we change this particular rule to read "4 days" instead of "4 weeks"? This thread is the exactly right place to do so ;-P (tongue in cheek)

/j

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Because it is added. The change of the rules is all that is needed. (And it can be clear from the changes in the rules - i.e. Removal of references to Nokia - that the transformation is part of the rule change.)

But then we thought why don't we make it more obvious what is the spirit of those changes in the question? and thus the added part.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

The change was mainly because until we get the legal paperwork in place, Hildon Foundation can't use the Maemo name. Once we get that, we could file a DBA and/or change the ByLaws to adapt whatever name we want.

In a way, this rule set does exactly that. The existing ByLaws allow for Council to self-govern to a great extent, and make it's own rules. The only "set in stone" rules are the time-frames and number of nominee issues, which are part of the ByLaws. To change ByLaws, it takes a vote of both Council and Board (but not a community referendum). The Council may (at it's option) call a referendum and use that to guide it's vote.

As for this referendum, the way it's phrased would bind future Council to call a referendum and vote accordingly to change the voting rules. This would effectively mean to change them it would require a vote of Board and Council (required by ByLaws), and a referendum (required by these rules) to pull off a change.

Realistically, if a referendum is passed/rejected by the community, I don't see Council or Board voting against those wishes, since both are here to serve that community.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

...tl;dr... :rolleyes:

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Too Lazy; Don't caRe about the community? Sounds about right. :rolleyes:

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

There are not 3000 new words. The first set is a copy of the rules used for all past Maemo Community Council elections. The second set shows where the changes are made by marking them in bold.

This is really not that complex. It's changing/adding about 30 words.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Woody: I removed my post as I couldn't get my thoughts across (sorry, bit on the edge with Q1 finishing and lots of projects piling up), but my '3000 words' were not about the few bolded words 3/5 change takes to make into effect, more about this 'transforms' part that in actuality results in all bylaws/rules geting LIVE and noone knows what is lost, all rules governing it (plus all rules about MCC that remain - do any remain? Or did you rewrite all rules that mention MCC to now point to HFC? I do believe while the rules about elections might be the bare basics, if you tell us changing MCC to HFC makes all other invalid I will have to vote NO in this referendum). Without a full writeup what this referendum is about and what changes we are to expect, I cannot honestly vote AYE. 4 weeks seems not that long as with every post it turns out more and more is at stake

edit: To be clear, quote from your recent post:

The existing ByLaws allow for Council to self-govern to a great extent, and make it's own rules.

Why referendum then? Will yes in that referendum make future referendums just an optional thing unlike today, cause it seems so (you would make your own rules right now, somehow calling it to make your ruling lawful tells me referendums should never be optional and always make law sorry for poor legalese). It just makes it more and more cloudy/shady, sorry

Another quote:

Realistically, if a referendum is passed/rejected by the community, I don't see Council or Board voting against those wishes, since both are here to serve that community.

Realistically, seeing how much power kicks into minds of those wielding it, why not? We have rules now that make referendum mandatory, now you propose the community to give up its power and trust few guys who will not be corrupted by power (should I point you to all politics drama threads? I don't trust you guys with that power. Serving community is great when being elected, later on n950s and whatnot and everyone is a sicko. Referendum should remain THE thing to kick all gollums without counting on gollum/you/estel/sd69/joerg/pali/anyone else to have to aye that and relinquish power, community says=god says, no exceptions, maybe for atheists, but you get the drift)

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

This referendum is not about "transformation". It's about aligning the rules so that the titles are effectively interchangeable. It allows Council to smoothly transition from working with Nokia to working with the Hildon Foundation. There is nothing lost in doing this.

All other rules? What other rules? There are no other rules that I'm aware of for Maemo Community Council. Everything besides the election rules, from when to hold meetings to how to interact with the community, is based on tradition and has changed over time.

For example, when I became Council I pushed to have weekly public meetings on IRC. Before that they were held semi-randomly, sometimes announced on the mailing list, sometimes on TMO, sometimes not at all.

Even if there are other rules, the ByLaws don't impose any new rules to Council. It allows it to self-govern. So this effectively transfers all of Councils current rules into it's own governing rules, including keeping all the things around referendums.

Did you read my reply to Joerg_rw?

This referendum is needed to fix problems with the existing rules. This includes the 3/5 issue, and the fact that the existing rules call out for a Nokia rep to make choices in special circumstances. The only thing this referendum is changing is that specific language.

To be clear: Nothing is changing about when a referendum is required and when it's not.

You have rules for Maemo Community Council that make a referendum mandatory only for changes to rules on elections and referendums. That is the only time referendums have ever been mandatory. The changes in this referendum DO NOT CHANGE THOSE REQUIREMENTS AT ALL. In fact, it solidifies that requirement, so that as Council transitions from working with Nokia to working with HiFo, those remain in effect.

The existing ByLaws do NOT require a referendum for anything. Those ByLaws are already in effect. By keeping that language while aligning the other rules to match those in the ByLaws, Council is effectively reaffirming it's own governing rules (which the ByLaws say it can do) that referendums are required to change election laws for Council.

There is no "power" in any of this. You've seen what happens when someone tries to "take power" in this community. They tend to get booted pretty quick.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

How do we change it? Some with access just change it(skunk work) or do we have to vote about it?

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

For those too busy to read the rest, this is a summary of what a vote on this referendum means.

You vote YES on the referendum:
Rules for MCC change to fix the 3/5 rule, and replace a Nokia rep with the HiFo Board. PERIOD.

Side effect (if YES vote wins):
Transition from working with Nokia to working with HiFo is simple. MCC can effectively be called both MCC and HFC, since they then are effectively identical when it comes to the rule sets they need to follow. Election criteria for both are identical, so one election covers both "titles". If desired, the ByLaws can be changed to change the name so it's clearly all the same thing.

You vote NO on the referendum:
The rules for MCC do not change. If 3 or 5 candidates stand,because of existing MCC rules, all will effectively be APPOINTED to the position of Council. Also, if any special exception occurs, or there are less than 3 candidates, we need to call Nokia and ask if they'll appoint a community rep to resolve it. If Nokia refuses, then what? If they do, and the rep says "You people are nuts... Shut it all down.", then what?

Side effect (if NO vote wins):
There will be a conflict in the rules, which could cause confusion (see last election). By the ByLaws, any Council "election" with 3/5 candidates would be considered invalid for the HFC title. At that point a special Board vote and/or a separate election following the ByLaw rules would be needed to give the title of HFC to some or all of the group "elected" by MCC rules.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

There will be a referendum vote, just like when one votes for Council. The rules on referendums require a referendum to be announced, followed by a 30 day "discussion period", then a vote.

This is the "discussion period".

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

@szopin, thanks for the posts It helps to set the points in a clearer way.
@Woody thanks for taking the time to explain in detail, much appreciated (I know it's coucil's responsibility to explain exactly what this referendum means but honestly, I could never write it down as well as that)

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Fully agreed.

But could someone please link to the "referendum voting site", as this is not easy to find and maybe explain "how to vote"?

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

yes, fully agreed, here as well.

There's no referendum voting site yet. We'll send out mails with ballots/tokens starting shortly. Those mails will have an URL and your token/password. This token will be valid for the referendum, the council elections, and any pending BoD election.

cheers
jOERG

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Can you please also state clearly from where are the mail addresses taken? (i.e. which list/forum/board gives membership to Maemo community)

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

http://maemo.org, not talk.maemo.org

maemo.org accounts are also linked to garage and wiki so if you have a garage or wiki account you should be good to go.

Also I have to repeat here the fact that you have to link your tmo and maemo.org accounts for karma to be calculated against your posts/thanks. Thus, if you want to vote, you're below the 10 karma threshold and haven't already linked do it now, as it takes a few days for karma to be updated.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Okay, as expected.
But now it is more clearly stated. And until then we (erm you/coucil/techies) should have resolved that problem with maemo.org login, or? Just as a small reminder ;)

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Yes, I asked the tech guys to have a look at it since it's *important*. I'm not doing micromanagement anymore, so I don't know what's state of this issue. It's in our roundup tracker since ages, marked as urgent.

/j

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

Okay, so, here is some backstory/explanation, on top of what everyone else gave, as well as some commentary towards the end:

1. Back when the Hildon Foundation was still being /formed/, it was intended and frankly understood by those involved that the "Hildon Foundation Council" in the community bylaws was essentially to replace the Maemo Community Council - which only exists informally from a legal standpoint.

2. They were alway intended to be essentially the same body, with the Hildon Foundation Council doing the usual Maemo Community Council things. The only changes were to fix the 3/5-candidates issue, an explicit inclusion of the 1-week "contemplation" period between candidacy announcements and actual voting (which is not actually in the Maemo Community Council rules), getting rid of the Nokia rep thing, and the thing stated in point #3 below:

3.A. Because the Hildon Foundation bylaws needed to legally/formally provide for elections, there was also some need to have a way of determining who is eligible to vote. Instead of copying the system of eligibility verbatim from the current Maemo Community Council rules, or handcoding some other explicit system into the bylaws, the bylaws state that the Hildon Foundation Council has the responsibility of coming up with the election eligibility requirements - no, it does not have to call for a referendum to do so, like the Maemo Community Council would.

3.B. The above is a good thing: remember, when the bylaws were written, we the community had no idea how things would turn out. For all we knew the karma system would be dead, all or some of the karma-relevant data (from which karma could still be computed by hand) lost irretrievably during the Nokia-to-Community infrastructure changeover, etc. It also allowed for the Council to change the election eligibility much more responsively than with a referendum (remember, not the election /rules/ - not who wins/loses or how they do it - just who is eligible to vote or be nominated for a position).

4. Point #3 might seem like a "power grab" - but it was the product of uncertain times. I would argue, in fact, that it has little potential for abuse in practice: In the entire time I've been in this community, when councilors or board members abused/"abused" their limited powers, it was in ways far less radical than the level of asinine it takes to try to rig the election eligibility in a way that biases things in your favor, but more importantly, such abuses have never really been supported by the others elected to those positions.

5. The LAST Council election, which also elected the first Hildon Foundation Board, was intended by those setting up Hildon Foundation to elect this Council for /both/ of the "Council" entities. The idea (as I have always understood it from everything said) was that during the transition from Nokia to Community ownership, the Council would be simultaneously the Maemo Community Council and the Hildon Foundation Council - then during the next Council election, we would simply elect the Council as the Hildon Foundation Council.

In other words, the Maemo Community Council "entity" and the Hildon Foundation Council "entity" would be one entity for one Council term, and then the "Maemo Council Entity" would be phased out. What this referendum is trying to do was always what was intended to happen. So why is it not already so?

6. A little while ago Rob (SD69) claimed that in his eyes, the current Council did /not/ count as the Hildon Foundation Council. This went outside of what (as I understand it) most of the community considered to be the case. I frankly think that Rob is wrong, and we /are/ both Councils, and I know I'm not the only one. But because we never made it explicit last election, and Rob is a Board member, it seems the case that in this upcoming election, we need to hold the elections explicitly for both Council 'entities' (although if we are not the Hildon Foundation Council, it is arguably not within our authority to hold a Hildon Foundation Council election - it's this kind of chicken-egg problem that I think makes Rob's interpretation non-sensible).

7. But if we are holding elections for both Council entities, naturally there's the problem of "we don't want two Councils" - no one here that I know of wants two Councils (many want zero Councils). So then the logical options are to either:

A. Hold both election simultaneously as if they were one body (and either hard-code the rules governing both Councils such that no one can run for just one of them, or hope no one throws a spanner in the works by explicitly saying "I am nominating myself for Maemo Community Council, but not Hildon Foundation Council".) Note that, if we are doing A as the long term solution, then we have to ADD the "you must run for both Councils at the same time" to the eligibility for nomination rules by either adding it to this referendum or starting another one, AND all Councils following that must not either intentionally or accidentally delete that provision for the. Also, any change, even one clearly supported by the Community, to the bylaws that in any way conflicts with the current Maemo Community Council rules would require a 30-days-to-get-to-a-vote referendum (actually, that's the thing - the bylaws change can pass instantly and apply to the "Hildon Foundation Council" 'half' of the Council immediately, and then the Council can be potentially paralyzed until the referendum updates the "Maemo Community Council" part of the ruleset). Mind you the Council is the body /more/ likely to be responsive to the "will of the people" than the Board, if the current situation is any indication of how the future will be like.

- or -

B. to agree as a community to merge them - my understanding when we were discussing this referendum, was that the "transform" wording meant explicitly this. I also think this is the long-term better approach, because of the problems mentioned above.

For that matter, look at this referendum: this wouldn't even be a thing if we didn't have two separate entities formally, for the same purpose and intended to be the same entity. If we keep them /both/ under the reasoning "well their rules are identical now and we can think of them as one", that's fine for a while, but I guarantee you we'll be dealing with this kind of stuff eventually - having to do some wierd formality of making sure that the rulesets are matched while half of the community (and even members of the elected bodies in question) ends up looking at the situation thinking "wait, wtf is going on? This Council is really two different entities with two identical rulesets, but one of them requires a 30-day referendum to change?". If we want to avoid politics fatigue in the future, this is exactly what we don't want. Me personally, both as a Council member AND more importantly as a community member, I find this formality-split in what everyone agrees ought to be a single entity to be the source of the most time wasting, legalese mitutia conflicts, and general headache (for me at least, literally) out of everything that has happened since we started this journey of being a community-run non-profit. I assure everyone that at least on my end, this referendum is an effort to remove as much of the unnecessary, technicalities-that-don't-serve-anyone politics as possible.

[Sidenote: we could do A for now, do B eventually. This is what I originally expected would happen, but IF this referendum passes (and people don't insist that "transform" didn't mean option B), we don't have to do A at all, because the 'merge' will have resolved before the new election cycle. If this referendum fails, we /have/ to do A this election cycle (except by then it'll be too late to update the eligibility rules by referendum to prevent people from running for one Council but not the other, so we'd be back to hoping no one does that).]

Effectively the /only/ "power grab" enabling aspect of this change is that the bylaws do not inherently require the Hildon Foundation Council to go through the community referendum process to change the rules that govern the elections (maybe, I think Woody and others might argue even this isn't really the case - though I think the bylaws as written don't support that position). But even IF that's true, there's nothing stopping the very first set of election criteria advanced by the first officially-recognized-as Hildon Foundation Council from saying "These rules may not be changed again except by referendum.", if that's what people really want.

Maybe the meeting times and various other tidbits are hardcoded into the Maemo Community Council rules as well, but if so, does anyone really want to claim we should have 30 days for debate if it ever becomes desirable to change details like that? Most of the really damaging stuff that the Council can currently do (not necessarily has the formal power to do, but can probably make happen by asking the right people) is not subject to referendum anyway. For example, two meetings ago, it was suggested that we should remove speedpatch and batterypatch packages from the extras and extras-testing repositories. One of the main reasons nothing has happened yet on that front was because I said "I want to start a thread asking the community for input on the issue first", even though I agreed with the reasoning provided for doing so. (Speaking of: I'll be putting that thread up sometime within the next 24 hours at the latest, I promise.) If other people were on the Council than the current batch, it's possible that would've just /happened/ without community input, as nothing in the Maemo Community Council rules prevents it any more than the Hildon Foundation bylaws do. So if we're trying to avoid abuse of power (as we should), we should focus on other things - coming up with ways to modify the bylaws to fix those issues, then electing Councilmembers and Board Directors who will enact the desired changes in the bylaws.

I completely agree, actually, that there should be power for the community to trigger referendum to kick people out of elected positions. But that's completely besides the point for THIS referendum and voting no on it will not in any way help us get to that goal.

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Thank you, everyone who took the time to read this - I know it's rather long.

Re: [Referendum] [Council] Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community Council(s)
 

I don't know if that post has made anything any more clear.
One thing's for sure though: this refrendum is not meant to change *anything* in the way that things _are_ handled now, and it's not meant for asking your opinion by voting yes or no - we hope this referendum will gain 100% yes votes, since there are no changes planned and with a rejected referendum we're basically f**ked and for sure nobody will want to continue on *.maemo management entities. What we need to get done during this referendum is you rising your concerns during this discussion period, so we can iron out anything that escaped our notice so in the end actually *nothing* changes for the community and the powers community has, and *all* of you can vote "YES" in 3 weeks.

cheers
jOERG