It's been six months which have flown by, but the current Maemo Community Council's term is coming to an end and it's time for the next election.

The next election's voting will run from Thursday, 22nd September to Wednesday, 28th September.

What will be decided

COUNCIL MEMBERS - The council is a body of volunteers taken from the Maemo community that acts as a focal point for the community.Historically, Council's role has been limited to representing developers on, and users of, maemo.org to Nokia (and vice versa). Examples of council activity can be found on the Council homepage or in the blog. However, the governance referendum in this election may change the role of Council.

GOVERNANCE REFERENDUM - Due to Nokia's announcement that it will stop funding for maemo.org in 2012, there will be a referendum and a vote to determine the future of maemo.org. There will be an opportunity to vote in favor of updating the role of Council so that it can organize a form of governance for the community OR in favor of winding down maemo.org when the funding stops (thus making*the 1st option unnecessary). There have been several related discussions on the forum:

Council Update July 2011
A modest proposal for a direction
Community Governance
The End is Coming

What's next?

Community members should carefully consider the governance referendum at this time. It must be debated for a minimum of one month prior to the election, and therefore the referendum will not be changed after Monday, 22nd August 2011

Community members should be considering whether they want to stand for Council. Anyone who has karma of over 100 is eligible to stand, including employees and sub-contractors of Nokia. When nominations open, you can nominate someone via an email to maemo-community (which they must reply to to accept) or you can put your own hat into the ring by emailing the same list. A further announcement will be made when nominations open, with more information.


The election timescale (all times UTC) is:

Nominations open: 00:00, Thursday, 1st September 2011
Nominations close: 23:59, Wednesday, 15th September 2011
Voting opens: 00:00, Thursday, 22nd September 2010
Voting closes: 23:59, Wednesday, 28th September 2010

How does the vote work?

Each member of maemo.org, who has an account that is more than 3 months old and who has earned over 10 "karma" points on that account, gets an electronic ballot. The election is a "single transferrable vote". They rank their Council candidates in order of preference; if their top candidate cannot get elected with the votes they receive, the votes are redistributed until all five seats have been allocated. The governance referendum vote will be taken at the same time as the Council vote.



Link: Original article.

Wait, what?!

We are having a vote that can decide to abandon maemo.org based on a majority who is leaving for other platforms/places (and therefore does not even belong in this community anymore IMHO) and thus block anyone who is willing to work to keep it alive, and destroy any chance of negotiating permissions to host binaries etc with Nokia?

Please don't shoot our feet like that.

I feel as though I am missing something here. I've clicked on the links in the OP (some of which are broken) and short of re-reading through multiple pages of the linked discussions, I don't see a "referendum" anywhere?

Leads me to believe that there is a referendum in existence somewhere so that it can be debated, possibly changed, and finalized before Aug 22, 4 days from now?

I'm guessing I overlooked something, but it would be nice to have a direct link to the referendum in question in this thread. I apologize for missing it wherever it is.

I hope you know me as the person who is working to keep maemo alive.

Although Qole has stated in email that he isn't seeking to block my efforts to keep maemo alive, I suggest a review of my response in the "end is coming" thread if you haven't already:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=23

People have pointed to the limited authority of Council as being a conduit to Nokia and I believe a majority of the current council is of the same opinion as Qole (at least they haven't joined me in my work to keep maemo alive).

There is no chance to negotiate permissions to host binaries etc with Nokia unless we organize into a legal entity. If there is anyway to organize maemo community into a legal entity without a vote, please describe it. I realize that there is an inequity that members who have not participated in awhile or who don't currently support maemo are eligible to vote. But I don't know any way around that at the current time.

Here is the currently proposed wording of my referendum (Jaffa is engaging the issue in the ML) subject to debate until August 22:

"Should the Community Council be authorized to form a governance structure which sees the continued support of maemo devices and survival of maemo-based and derived open source software even without Nokia involvement?

[ ] Yes
[ ] No"

I welcome friendly amendments. I don't want to see maemo wound down.

I do, ergo the shock!

I would expect to see a few concrete proposals, followed by debate (people are going to have strong feeling about things like jurisdiction for example) followed by a vote between the proposed options (including "none of the above"). A referendum on chosing between (some vague notion of) organising or winding down right now seems both forced and premature to me.

That's arguably better, but still too vague. Many people's gut reaction (including mine I think) would be to not give the next (unknown) council carte blanche on something that important.

What are the implications of a "no" result?

Also, why such a short debate period? Can we at least extend it to match the nomination period for the council?

@SD69 Before the referendum, it may be a good idea to have a census?

Each person should enter:

• forum name
• interest type (developer, user)
• owned device(s)
• devices considered for future

The members attending the census, are the ones most likely to debate, vote, contribute.

The collected data should be compared to the number of repository refreshes, to get the idea how many people did not register on census.

My apologies for the broken link (posting to three different mechanisms with different coding reqt's and for some reason I can't edit this thread).

Any way here is the (unbroken) link to the Maemo election process

http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council/Election_process

It is still broken.
Correct link.

Just a clarification: the council has not discussed this internally, so it is important to make it clear that I didn't agree to make this referendum binding in any way; it should not "determine" anything, only provide guidance for the next council as to the general will of the tiny minority of the community who actually bothers to vote.

@qole and @SD69

Please coordinate.

Qole, usually the voters delegate their decision rights to council members, who than make decisions.

However in this case this decision is of strategic importance, so the pool of voters should have direct impact.

That will provide the next Council with the credibility to facilitate independence of maemo.org as a legal entity.