The basic arguments can be summed up as such:
1) There was a clear case of conflict of interest. Not many users of the community follow mailing lists especially newer members to know about the discussion going on there. A few users via mailing list, the thread on TMO and IRC did express their reservations but the decision to be the judge and the contestant at the same time was not reversed.

This was one of the reasons woody did not self-nominate himself for the device award.

Till date, the Council has been defending their rights to the device but not apologizing for the conflict of interest nor are they mentioning how this can ever be avoided in the future.

2) Harmattan users saw how two prominent devs; itsnotabigtruck and e-yes were not awarded their devices but the devices were awarded to some lesser deserving members instead. What I and some others who have voiced out have felt is that we know this is surely the last place for those two devs to get their devices as their work is not sanctioned by Nokia hence they won't be able to get it from the other 75 devices quota.

To add insult to injury, although the awards were for past deeds, there were clearly members who received the devices who voiced out that they will NOT be developing for harmattan. We understand that's their choice but studying the recent situation where the existence of our community is uncertain for the devices to have been awarded to these members instead of the aforementioned two devs was unfair.

Still, we felt that if the Council stood by their decision, they should have not allocated 4/4 devices for themselves. SD69 obviously deserves the device the most in the Council but the other 3 Councillors should have been pragmatic and sent 2 of their devices to the two devs instead.

3) There were personal attacks by the Councillors on members due to these members taking the Councillors to task for for what we felt was unfairness and a huge conflict of interest.

I understand some of you felt that Arie or others were getting personal, their frustrations were being raised with every evading response given where no apology was forthcoming and the right to a device was emblished even further.

4) Some arguments from the Councillors were just trying to cover their backs such as we've already sent the list to qgill what can we do now? Everyone could read that qgill had said he hasnt had the list yet so no device has been sent out at the time of your response and our discussions. A weak argument that further strengthened some doubts about the personal greed of some Councillors.

5) Even after such a long discussion the Council simply refused to back down of their stance and older members of the Community came to back them partially. Members who said that lets move on as its looking bad for our community and they didn't object to the awards but to the process were thaked by some Councillors and cited later as proof of support! This is uncomprehensible that when some members are giving you face by supporting your decision but not your chosen process you don't get their point. An apology, a decision to make do the decision, promise not to repeat such mistakes etc but nothing happened.


I know I've written a very long post, its my longest ever, but I think this more or less summarises the main issues everyone has that have not been addressed till date by the Council.

Furthermore, even though we backed out of the old thread, Council repeated their disregard for members by posting in the Minutes thread about some TMO members going crazy in addition to Arie being singled out in IRC discussions between the Council.

Shouldn't the Council have let the matter rest instead of adding more fuel to the fire?