This community is dying for one reason only: because Nokia has stopped making devices -- so users and developers are moving to other devices (some faster, others slower, but eventually everyone will go when their devices fail).

It is nothing to do with money, nor to do with what anyone says on the forum. Nor is it to do with the success or otherwise of any other project. It is because there are no devices!

However, the community is not dead yet. Many people still want to use their devices, some even want to continue to develop for their devices.

As long as Nokia is willing to keep funding the infrastructure, that is great. Once Nokia stop funding, all the community needs is a forum, a wiki and a repository. There is no need for grandiose plans for legal entities, subscriptions, membership, governance or anything like that -- I am sure two or three volunteers will step up to provide the limited hosting services needed (especially as the community will be a lot smaller still if the plug is not pulled for another 18 months).

But whether you agree with my minimal, low cost vision, or abill_uk's much more expansive vision, the council's effort between now and then should go on making sure that Nokia permits us to host, on this new infrastructure, everything we need which they still own. That includes device images (for flashing, preferably including the special images for N900 Fremantle Stars prototype devices -- which we need to be able to keep running as more and more devices die) and documentation (including material currently on Forum Nokia). We should also make sure we have clarity that everything currently on maemo.org (including the Wiki and the bug reports and history) can be taken with us.

The practical steps which can, and should, be taken now are to identify all the IPR we need continued access to and to get Nokia to put it under a suitably free licence. That will probably take a year as Nokia will have little interest in paying their lawyers to work on that so we will have to call in all the help we can to even achieve that much!

I certainly hope that there are some council candidates who will focus on this important and immediate activity instead of grandiose plans which no one needs and no one will pay for, in a shrinking community.