Hi everyone,

Please see the below letter of resignation from the Hildon Foundation Board of Directors.

I also sent this to the Community mailing list and will be posting it on the HF website.

Thank you,
Tim

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4 March 2013

From: Tim Samoff
Maemo Community Member
Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Hildon Foundation

To: The Hildon Foundation
The Maemo Community

Dear Hildon Foundation & Maemo Community,

This letter will serve as my formal resignation both as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Hildon Foundation, as well as a member in general. I am saddened to have to do this, but my vision of the Foundation as well as that of the Maemo Community has changed since being elected. Please read on in order to gain more context of why I am doing this…

Over the past months, much has been accomplished in terms of finding a permanent home for the Maemo Community. Thanks to the Maemo Community at large, we have pulled in enough money to handle server migration(s) and even pay for server hosting if and when needed. We were also able to negotiate free transference of ownership of the Maemo discussion forums (talk.maemo.org) and purchase a community-owned license of vBulletin (the software in which the forums run). Of course, much of my own personal thanks go to the hard-working Maemo Community Council who were able to find many creative and viable options for collocating and hosting the maemo.org infrastructure.

But, all of these successes aside, I have come to a new, personal understanding of the viability of a Board of Directors acting in conjunction with a Community Council at this time. While I whole-heartedly feel like an organization like the Hildon Foundation would be a positive force in the open source world, I think that the relationship between the Board of Directors and the Community Council has been counter-productive. As a nonprofit entity that must operate according to bylaws and legal formalities (as well it should in order to comply with certain governing laws), the processes have been less than efficient. Likewise, as a former Community Council member myself (two terms as a member and one term as the Chair), I have realized that a Council more than adequately prepared to run an ecosystem such as the Maemo Community. Similarly, operation of the Hildon Foundation — again, for me personally — has been less than the rewarding experience that I was hoping it would be.

Unfortunately, since the original Hildon Foundation Board of Directors was elected in October 2012 we have lost two elected members, leaving Rob Bauer (appointed) and myself (elected). Now, as I resign, only one person — who is not an elected member — will remain “in charge.” While I have all confidence in Mr. Bauer’s expertise and enthusiasm, I must emphatically make my stance on the fact that it behooves the Maemo Community to demand that other Maemo Community members occupy the remaining seats. This Foundation was created for a purpose: to aid in the continuance of the Maemo Community. To instate any other agenda would be counterintuitive to the original goals. Furthermore, I feel that the Maemo Community Council should be given more responsibility in general operations of the maemo.org ecosystem. While a more Foundation-oriented approach is one that I would typically agree with, I don’t think it is what Maemo currently requires.

I still consider myself a die-hard Maemo Community Member; I still believe in the idea of the Hildon Foundation and I desire that it succeed. Although, at the moment, I feel like the Community Council has more at stake in helping the community survive. The Council is agile and responsive and can do more quickly than a Foundation-approach could ever manage.

In the end, this is completely my opinion. Also, I have to admit that my own time constraints have been detrimental to my position on the Board. I hope that all future members understand the duties and commitments better than I did.

Lastly, I currently manage the Board’s website at my webhost. I am more than happy to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. I will also gladly transfer any ownership and applicable files and software to whoever requests to manage it after me.

Thank you to everyone who has been involved in aiding in the survival of Maemo.

Sincerely,

Tim Samoff
Maemo Community Member

Dear Tim,
I'm sad to hear that, though i can understand and sympathise with your rationale and for sure I have no idea about your personal situation and time constraints.

Have you considered what this means for HiFo at large and may you have a suggestion what are the next steps to take, to keep HiFo alive? Could BoD appoint a successor for Ivan before you leave? We wouldn't want Nokia to dump maemo to the next bin they find since there's nobody to talk to anymore.

All the best
jOERG

Based on this, according the the ByLaws of the foundation, an election is automatically triggered.

SD69 should call for those elections ASAP. If he does not do so rapidly, Council should call for and start that process, as is their right in the ByLaws under this circumstance.

The election must be announced soon, and the election date set to 1 month from now. There are steps and stages, all spelled out in the ByLaws, for nominations, Q&A, and actual elections. I will work with Council to assist in setting up the voting machine.

In the mean time we need to keep on Nokia about the transfer. We are facing a critical hand off in the next couple of weeks.

Reading this, I'm not quite getting what your rationale is, but then again I've had very little sleep, I don't suppose you could clarify/reiterate it?
If you don't wish to offer a clearer one that's totally your prerogative too... Thanks for all the work you did thus far!

Tim,

Thanks for the work and good luck in the future.

As the sole remaining Board director (and as the loser in an apparent game of "not it"), it falls on me to continue on and appoint a replacement for Ivan if possible, and now for Tim if possible. I wish the time period to do so was longer so there could be more consideration and input.

I appoint Craig Woodard and Jim Jagielski. Craig should be known to most here as a former maemo council member and a co-founder of Hildon Foundation. He has done invaluable work for maemo in the past and I believe will work diligently to do so in the future. Jim is a co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation and is also on the Board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). He is new to maemo, but he should be able to provide valuable organizational insight and assistance as the Foundation struggles to get on its feet. Please join me in welcoming them both to our Board. Both have indicated a willingness to serve, but if either one should decline their appointment, then the other one will fill Ivan's seat and another appointment will be made for Tim's seat.

I am the Foundation Secretary and will contact the new Directors in that capacity to schedule the next Board meeting as soon as practical in an attempt to avoid delay in the Foundation moving forward.

A cordial welcome to both of you, guys! And many thanks for helping to keep maemo alive :-)
You both seem to have picked a bumpy segment of our way forward to jump in, the more I'm happy to have you on board (pun intended), there's quite a number of pressing topics to handle during the very next weeks. A word to Jim: since you're new to maemo (and new to us ;) I would like to invite you to maemo council's weekly meeting at Friday 1800UTC in IRC:(freenode.net) #maemo-meeting. It's maybe a good place to introduce yourself and learn to know a few of us. I'm looking forward to meet you there.
Looking forward to our cooperation.

Thanks Rob for handling this problem in such a smooth and fast way.

cheers
jOERG

dejavu?

Thank your for your continuing service to the community.

While I accept the appointment, I'm not 100% sure of the validity of the timing. While it was done inside the 7-day window, it was not done at an official meeting. I'm not sure that's required though, in the ByLaws...

Regardless, we have important work to do with Nokia to finish this transfer. I've been following this from the community as closely as possible, but may not have had all the info (not being on the internal mailing list).

I still believe we should consider doing elections, at latest in a joint election with Council, to validate the current Board.

I concur that there is a need for an election, if not now due to the tasks at hand, soon.

Regarding official meeting I don't see the point as Rob was the only director at the time of the decision.

Thank you for what you have done. At the same time I don't really understand why you joined and/or leaving. Is it becouse it was boring? that's not a valid reason. Was it becouse it was inefficient? That's not a valid reason. Was it becouse the council could manage without you and HF? That's not a valid reason.

Now, these are only my reflection and since you are here on your free time I'm not judging you. Just hoping that you not just quit everything like this in real life.

Good luck and I'm hoping you are still around even after that. You are very welcome to off topic, the best section!

Take care and GL.

Now what, who is running the show now?

Texrat? and an unknown force, could be a nice directorship. Welcome!