MWKN Weekly News: 25 March 2013
 

MWKN Weekly News: 25 March 2013


Proposed referendum to tidy up Community Council election process before change in scope

When the Hildon Foundation was formed the by-laws provided for a Hildon Foundation Council to replace the Maemo Community Council, as an interface with Nokia is no longer needed. The stated intention of the primary author of the by-laws, Craig Woodward, was that the Maemo Community Council would transition directly into the Hildon Foundation Council and that these were not two separate councils, but a change primarily in name. There has been some disagreement on this point from certain community members, who hold the opinion that the Maemo Community Council has no authority over the Hildon Foundation since it is not the Hildon Foundation Council.

As you all should be aware, the current Hildon Foundation Board is composed entirely of appointment members, as all elected board members eventually stepped down. To address this issue for future Hildon Foundation Councils, a referendum has been started to amend the election rules to handle a situation where all 5 council members are appointment members. This referendum will also align the Maemo Community Council voting rules with the Hildon Foundation by-laws and help clarify that the Hildon Foundation Council and the Maemo Community Council are, in fact, a single body and that the Maemo Community Council does have authority over the Hildon Foundation (in this case, potentially to trigger a Hildon Foundation election). {user:mentalist traceur} posted a thread on Talk to discuss it: The complete referendum is available on the wiki.


maemo.org mailing lists back online

Our new maemo.org sysadmin, Falk Stern, sent a test email through the maemo.org mailing lists today after bringing lists.maemo.org back online. The maemo.org mailing lists should be functional again.

Relating to Falk picking up the mantle of maemo.org systems administration (which is not a small nor easy job), I, on behalf of the MWKN staff, would like to thank him for volunteering for what is generally a very thankless and time consuming position. He's an especially qualified candidate for the job of maemo.org sysadmin (as the network team leader for XING AG) and is very dedicated to Maemo and maemo.org. Our infrastructure would not be operational without his help, so make sure you toss a big "Thank you!" his way if you see him.



In this edition...

1. Front Page
   • Proposed referendum to tidy up Community Council election process before change in scope
   • maemo.org mailing lists back online
2. Development
   • Changes to meego.gitorious.org as MeeGo infrastructure continues to wind down

Re: MWKN Weekly News: 25 March 2013
 

This is wrong. The bylaws do not state that Hildon Foundation Council replaces Maemo Community Council. Indeed, Maemo Council was appointed in December for running, administrating, and managing daily operations of maemo.org.

The bylaws were crowdsourced, but if any one person was the primary author, it was me. There should be proper attribution, although I don't think the primary author's opinion is entitled to any extra weight when it comes to discussing the Bylaws.

Re: MWKN Weekly News: 25 March 2013
 

No one said it states it, in the sense that it was explicitly stated. The claim is that the reason the bylaws provide for a Council at all, was for that purpose. And if you can sincerely tell me it was obvious to everyone involved that the Hildon Foundation Council was not supposed to phase out and replace the Maemo Community Council, then maybe you have a point, but as someone who had at least a small idea of theirs make it into the bylaws, I would point out it certainly wasn't obvious to me. And I'm pretty damn sure any reasonable person looking at the development of the bylaws would've thought the whole point of having a council in the bylaws is for it to subsume/replace the community council.

To be frank, I have difficulty believing that even you ever thought that that was not the point.

And as Woody, who actually /was/ at the meeting prior to that one, has stated before, the note in that meeting is a reference to the fact that in the prior meeting, the current Maemo Council was indeed recognized as HiFo Council. (Yes, I'm sure I paraphrased that in a way that gives that statement a slightly different meaning than Woody's in the legalese dialect of English, but I'm pretty sure it accurately encapsulates what woody was getting at.)

I agree that the meaning of the Bylaws, assuming they are well written, should be easy to establish by any reasonable person, and not just the authors. But if the in-context-in-which-it-was-written interpretation differs from the taken-literally-now interpretation, I would argue that is indicative of a flaw in how the bylaws were articulated, and the context-in-which-it-was-written (which is different from the intent of any author(s), although it includes it) should take precedence. And I have yet to hear a reasonable argument against the idea that the root reason for including a Council in the bylaws was to continue the community tradition of having a council, under the formal framework of HiFo.

Re: MWKN Weekly News: 25 March 2013
 

Please point out where you what you are claiming here is supported in the thread where the bylaws was developed.

Please point out where this appears in the actual meeting minutes. Please don't refer to what somebody else says was in the meeting minutes or claims happened at the meeting but wasn't recorded in the minutes.


Probably because no one ever made an argument against that idea.

Where I think the path goes astray is at the point where it is asserted that , because there is a Hildon Foundation Council, there can't also be a Maemo Community Council. If we called the second group, the "Maemo Administrative Committee" rather than "Maemo Community Council", would you be more inclined to accept that it be allowed to continue to exist and not be subsumed into the Hildon Foundation Council?

Re: MWKN Weekly News: 25 March 2013
 

Speaking as a community member (who partipated in electing both the Hildon Foundation BoD, and the MCC, and donated money to help run both), here's what I'd like to see:

- MCC = HFC, this just makes sense at this time.
- Elections for HF BoD commence quickly-I'm not comfortable with a BoD that is entirely unelected.
- HF's main focus needs to be getting anything and everything possible signed over from Nokia to maintain the maemo.org infrastructure and maemo-family (including Harmattan/N9) of devices into the future (and it appears to be doing so, although we hear very little about it officially), in accordance with the maemo community's will.
- fix any inconsistencies in the bylaws that cause all these headaches and arguments!

And what I don't want:
- using the exact wording of the bylaws against the community's will
- agendas that don't advance the primary focus of what I think HF should be about: maintaining maemo.org and the maemo-family of devices-especially as those are not yet complete. Things like Jolla? Forget about them for now until we've got the community stablized.

I believe the general community's feelings are the same, but if you (MCC or BoD) feels differently, start a poll to really gauge what the community wants.

Re: MWKN Weekly News: 25 March 2013
 

The deal is done and the contract is ready to be signed. I'm personally eager to sign the contract since I've done most of the work (Ivan did quite a bit too) on the deal.

I have indicated that I would like to see Hildon go beyond current maemo.org infrastructure which does not currently include Harmattan/N9.

Agreed!

This is hard. The bylaws have to be complied with for the Foundation to continue to exist as a nonprofit. And how do you determine what is truly the community's will? The community is hundreds if not thousands of persons, most of which understandably don't want to get involved in petty details about bylaws and invalid Board appointments. I am dubious about whether a poll on t.m.o reflects the community's will, especially if the poll is meant to include Harmattan/N9 community.

Re: MWKN Weekly News: 25 March 2013
 

I wasn't clear on what Harmattan assets were being maintained by HF/MCC/HFC, and it seems like the answer is "none" (at least at this time.) Where is the Harmattan/N9 community if it is not on TMO/maemo.org? And can they be considered to be part of this "community" if they don't participate in this community (via TMO, maemo.org elections, etc...)

Re: MWKN Weekly News: 25 March 2013
 

It is correct that Harmattan assets are not and will not be maintained at maemo.org (the Harmattan assets are spread out amongst various places such as EverythingN9). However, Hildon Foundation is more than TMO/maemo.org and the broader Hildon "community" includes Harmatan/N9. In fact, we've contemplated that Hildon Foundation could host a harmattan community repo.