MWKN Weekly News: 22 August 2011


Upcoming vote for Maemo Community Council and referendum on the future of maemo.org

One of the bigger long-term issues resulting from the Elopocalypse in February is the status of maemo.org and its funding through next year. RM Bauer is looking to have a conclusion to these issues with a referendum as part of the election of the next Community Council: A number of corrections have been pointed out to Rob, following his initial post. Nokia have not said they will not fund the servers past 2012, nor will the referendum be "binding" to the Council. Articles dealing with the debate will be part of our "future of maemo.org" series - if we miss something, please let us know.



In this edition...

1. Front Page
   • Upcoming vote for Maemo Community Council and referendum on the future of maemo.org
2. Applications
   • Preview of MeeCast (from the people who brought you OMWeather) for Harmattan
   • gPodder 2.18 in Extras-testing needs votes; and problems with package promotion?
3. Development
   • Shared Harmattan repo for developer libraries
   • Requirement for Ovi: single instance Harmattan apps
4. Community
   • Future of maemo.org: "The end is coming"
   • Future of maemo.org: A "modest proposal for a direction for maemo.org activities"
   • Future of maemo.org: Are the options for the Maemo community really limited to not-for-profit or death?
   • ...and 3 more
5. Devices
   • Unlocked, SIM-free Nokia N9 in UK - soon for £520 for 16GB (ouch)
   • Progress in getting CrystalHD video acceleration on ExoPC
6. In the Wild
   • HP stop producing webOS devices. Exploring options to "optimize value" of webOS
7. Announcements
   • Jeremiah Foster running for Maemo Community Council
   • Scrobbler for Maemo; on N900, N9 and N950
   • Sandora falling sand game for Harmattan, available from COBS
   • ...and 3 more

I trust you meant well, but these "corrections" seem to be one side of an argument.

First -
I copy below the part of the last council meeting where Matti Arias says funding will stop in 2012 and not to expect "any financial support" after 2012. Seems pretty clear to me and to X-Fade. Of course, we also have the 2/11 announcement and the "no future meego devices" announcement. For the sake of brevity, I will not go into all of the previous statements made to maemo council. Although it has been said funding will stop sometime in 2012, we can remain hopeful that there is a change of Nokia's plans to stop its support of Maemo/MeeGo after the N9.

[11:45] <SD69> is it feasible to continue t.m.o. on a reduced budget?
[11:46] <SD69> lose Akamai, accept slower speeds, etc?
[11:46] <mairas> SD69: after 2012, you mean?
[11:46] <X-Fade> SD69: t.m.o. is one server, owned by reggie.
[11:46] <SD69> I mean after 2012
[11:47] <mairas> SD69: you shouldn't expect any financial support from Nokia after 2012 :-(
[11:48] <SD69> yes - I am thinking of a reduced community budget
[11:48] <X-Fade> SD69: Expect none, really.
[11:48] <X-Fade> SD69: By that time we need to either come up with funding ourselves or shut thing down.
[11:49] <SD69> X-Fade: exactly
[11:49] <mairas> again, the amount of traffic is likely to be quite low by then so it should be perfectly realistic for community to purchase the server bandwidth themselves

Second -
No one has decided a referendum passed by the community is not binding. Council has not yet addressed the issue. And even if it does, I would think it obvious that a decision by the Council that a community passed referendum is not binding on it would present governance problems.

Furthermore, as I already made clear, the referendum merely authorizes the Council to change the structure of maemo.org and does not direct any particular change. So there is no longer a conflict in the instance of this referendum.

http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...st/004884.html

Apologies, but at the time of writing, Quim's questioning as to the source of this "announcement" was still the last word on the subject.

X-Fade's opinion is respected, but he is a contractor, not the person deciding the budgets - nor how they are used.

...this is the point I'm making. Or trying to. In the opinions of the MWKN editors, the notion of the proposed "yes/no" referendum "binding" the actions of the incoming council of volunteers is - to be honest - silly. As you say, for this referendum, you've now changed the proposed wording to allow the Council to be "authorised".

Personally, and I've expressed this elsewhere (so this isn't the thread for it), I don't think the Council needs to be "authorised", any more than the Council needs to be authorised to facilitate MohammadAG's CSSU work.

OK, its your opinion, but the front page didn't present it as an opinion. MWKN should not present as fact, much less a "correction", what is its opinion. And why was it raised at all if it was a non-issue at the time of writing?

Not to let one issue sidetrack everything. Thanks for doing the MWKN every week. It does serve as a quick read for me to make sure I haven't missed anything important. Looking forward to the "future of maemo.org" series