The two biggest problems (here, and as I see it) are incomplete documentation, and misconceptions about what the council is and what it does (which stems, in part, at least here, seemingly, from some people being unwilling to step foot outside of itT).

The documentation was something the first council had on our list for a very long time, but which was never completely finalized. Jaffa appears to have solved that to some sort of satisfaction, though and (hopefully) has largely addressed the second in the same step, but I'll add my part to it.

A lot of people seem to have the idea that the council is (or should be) the highly active administrative body of the community (and, far too often thanks to lingering trademark confusion, of Maemo*). My own vision of the council is of facilitation. Our job is not to administer all of the day-to-day goings on of maemo.org and the community, which would be a very visible and high-profile position indeed, but to help encourage community activity and make sure every element of the community (including Nokia) is aware of what's going on elsewhere (in this case, we've apparently failed).

Maemo's participation in GSoC is a good example of how this should work. VDVsx (get that man a t-shirt!) had a plan for getting Maemo involved as a mentoring organization for GSoC this Summer, so he went ahead a put it together. He asked the council for some input and help (a quick sanity check on the idea, some help in implementing the plan, a little copy-editing on the wiki, etc.), but the council's involvement was largely peripheral. The success of the plan wasn't dependent upon the council, but we helped it along a bit and made it a bit easier and just a bit more likely to succeed.

This is how I see the council's involvement working. Not the high-profile group that comes up with the GSoC plan and implements it, but the group that helps somebody else do so—facilitators. So, no, there isn't a huge amount of fanfare about what the council does, but there doesn't need to be. If the community is growing and improving (even if you don't know we're doing it), then we're doing our job right.

That said, there a few obvious things that the council has done that, perhaps, you've missed out on (which is why I recommend paying attention to the council blog). The debmaster hiring is probably the most high-profile of them.


*penguinbait, to address the correction earlier more helpfully, the reason why it's most certainly not the "Maemo Council" (which is the same reason why "Maemo.org" is inappropriate) is because when you say "Maemo", what you're actually saying is "Nokia". Although the community is involved with Maemo's development (Maemo the software platform, that is) the owner of the platform and the trademark and the holder of the final say-so is Nokia. So when you say "Maemo Council" you're implying that the council is of Nokia and has some real say in the development decisions about the platform. This leads to confusion and misconceptions and what the council is and what it does. Both of which we already have more than enough of (for instance, Linux Devices recently made the mistake of claiming that maemo.org was involved in the decision not to release Fremantle for OMAP2).