In order for this to proceed, legal papers must be filed, and must be in place before work can start. We noted several times, both in the bylaw threads, the Ask the Council thread, the meetings, and even in one of the drafts of the bylaws themselves, that we would need to nail this stuff down by the 17th at the latest. As things are, delays moved that to yesterday.

The filings are underway, and the paper trail started. If we had put off filing any longer the paperwork would not be completed and filed with the proper offices by the time the elections finished. As it stands, it's likely there will be a delay between the Board being elected and it being able to actually act because of paperwork delays that have already happened.

Changing the organizational name after the filings are in place is possible, it just costs money to do so. There's also the option of adding a name, like a DBA (Does Business As), which will probably be the easier thing to do. For that reason, I say let the poll take it's course. We can always add or adopt a new name. As things stand, Hildon Foundation was then, and is now, still topping the poll.

As for "just waiting 6 more days", tell me: How do you think Nokia and others will react to the Board when it says "Sorry, we can't negotiate with you for another 6 days because of filing delays from when we were deciding on a name"? That's pretty sad.

The bylaws,FYI, are an odd exception in this case. Bylaws for the group must be approved of by the first Board to become effective, so they can be discussed, reviewed, and revised right up to that first meeting. That's the only reason that discussion is still going on as well. I personally wanted those nailed down by the 17th as well, so people nominated for the positions would know what they were in for. But legally, they don't need to be finished until the first day the Board is active. So let me make it crystal clear here, for all to read:
The bylaws MUST be finished by October 12th!


It's also mildly frustrating to push for something for several months, only to have someone object to something at the very last minute, and demand more time to resolve it. Especially when after noting we have limited time, it took over a week to commit to doing a poll, and two more days to revised the OP, review that, and start the poll! For what? So we'd see the results point to the original choice?

You say we didn't communicate this, but we have. We've been talking about this for months. It's been on the Mailing List, it's been in the weekly IRC meetings, it's been in the Blog posts of those meetings, and in the TMO posts related to that. We even made additional posts, and had moderators make them sticky to increase their visibility. I ask you, what more would you prefer we had done? Send you a personal invitation to comment on each thing we've discussed via a PM or e-mail? It's not like this was in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory, with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

Sorry, I know you're upset. But to hear someone say "I didn't know X!", after we've done everything short of spam-mailing all 65K users here about every little thing as it happens, is beyond frustrating.

The root of every issue this Council cycle has had has been individual people saying "I didn't know X!", when it had been out there to see, in quadruplicate, for months. Talked about, hashed, rehashed, in 4 different mediums, 20 different ways.

"I didn't know Council could compete in the CA!"
"I didn't know there even was a CA!"
"I didn't know I needed to link my TMO profile to have enough Karma to vote!"
"I didn't know we were forming a foundation!"
"I didn't know voting for CC even started!"

I guarantee you, during the vote cycle, people will come here to ask "What's this 'Board' election about?" And "Why didn't you tell us about this, and why can't we have say in X?!"

There are probably a ton of people that don't know that Quim is no longer at Nokia. Or that Nokia is not renewing it's contract to keep the servers running past December. Or that there's been anything at all going on here to try to stop everything from going dark at the end of the year.

To each of these people I ask: If you really care that badly, why would you not spend a drop of effort to keep up with anything going on? We care enough to put it out there in at least 4 different ways, every week, sometimes every day! You can read or even rss-feed the Blog, read or subscribe to one of several forum threads, subscribe to the mailing list, linger on IRC, or read the bot-logs from the channels. Any ONE of those would have gotten you this information. And at least 3 of those you can automate to the point that systems will push that info directly into you mailbox, or desktop, or widget, or instant message, or SMS, or tweet, or USB smoke-signal generator, or whatever you use as a primary communications media.

It just gets to me when, after months of doing everything I can to keep on top of things and make sure things are known, and open, and transparent as they can possibly be, people still pop up and go "I didn't know X! And it's your fault for not driving to my house, knocking on my door, and telling me, directly, in my language, and forcing me to repeat it back to you, and then reminding me the next day in the same way, for week."

Sorry... But you need to take some responsibility for this on yourself. Democracy requires of it's constituency a very minimal amount of effort to stay informed about what's going on. If you don't expend that minimal effort, it's hardly fair to complain about it.