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