Since joerg asked for publishing this, here it is (the original mail went to council, techstaff and board):

Dear new councilors and juiceme,

first of all, since this is my first official mail to the new Council, a very warm welcome, I'm glad to see each of you made it! This will be a long read but I believe it's worth to mention.

As new councilors you are facing the change of our communitys legal entity, again. Hopefully, this time for good. From some comments on what council is, I read that it has not been made clear what council is and what it is going to be in the future.

Councils' wiki-page still states that With the MC eV, Council remains the representative for community, the associated members. Only thing that changes is that it's not directed towards some 3rd party anymore but the MC eV itself, which it is an entity of. So since we are self-organized now, how much sense would it make to simply replace Nokia by HiFo/MC eV? Isn't the conduit-role somewhat obsolete by now since all "HiFo/MC eV-generated information" comes from and is adressed to our own self-governed organization?

Probably not if you want to believe "the original Mamo Community Council" still lives on outside of, or, is and always will be unrelated to any such entity. Then you are probably also questioning the referendum held last year:
Please note that two very respected community members were sacrificed for this.

On the other side, you could accept the fact that there simply is no way around having all our organizations departments act within a self(!)defined ruleset. MC eV Bylaws + General regulations will be the fundament and roof of all our activity and national/EU laws plus the Nokia agreement will be the walls, if you will.

Please review the diagramm that reflects the MC e.V.'s organization (final update):

*1) Board may change bylaws by unanimous decision
*2) General Assembly may change bylaws by 2/3 majority
*3) General Assembly may change General Regulations incl. Council Election Rules by 2/3 majority

Please review the tmo-thread, I suggested different models:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91155&page=6

legal docs:
Satzung/Bylaws: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/AMabik4zeD
Vereinsordnung/General Regulations: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/imtFYfpUKK
Vorstands-Geschäftsordnung/Board Regulations: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/uwQXMscA2n

Now what's the new situation with MC eV in place instead of HiFo?
- board consists of at least 3 instead of 5 or 7 directors
- additionally to the community (associated members), a new body, the General Meeting (regular members) is established. This is the point of contact for community to engage and show responsible or operate on communitys' behalf; democracy becomes live here.
- bylaws may not only be altered by 2/3 majority of the board, but also by 2/3 majority of the General Meeting. Since General Meeting established the bylaws, they HAVE to remain authority over them, by law.
- regular members are accepted by board upon request
- regular members only are eligible to candidate AND vote for board
- council election rules remain the same, plus
- election rules may not only be altered by community-referendum but also by 2/3 majority of the General Meeting (And I may even support an initiative that gives Council the same right directly, not only through referendum, if it's decided by General Meeting)

Why didn't we simply use HiFo bylaws for the MC eV?
Like for any other "Verein" (in the US as well as in many other countries), there HAS to be a General Meeting once a year or so, by law (HiFos only members so far are board ). That's the base of every association and supposedly they shall be the ultimate force since they funded the whole thing. This OTOH, excludes a major part of community (associated members) from electing and being elected for board, since accepting all ~60.000 user accounts as regular members wouldn't be an option for organizational reasons and there was consensus that this was the right way to go.

While this, from a conspirational POV, may come across as somewhat segregative, the MC eV invites and encourages everybody to participate and become regular member. The approach is to have a strong General Meeting, including all active members esp. the volunteers on all levels (board, council, techstaff, sysops, maintainers...). They may only vote for board once per year but are also free to decide whatever they agree upon by 2/3 majority anytime. Community power accumulates here, its' even superior over board and council in major regards.

Founding HiFo had the same aim to create a home for our community, but for some strange reason that attempt went terribly wrong. Please think about it, HiFo board is supposed to consist of 5 or 7 directors. 7 directors... how much more community-participation could you ask for? Probably noone understood how it should work and just believed that those guys will do all the heavy lifting anyways. But too late, HiFo very soon was perceived as an obstacle rather than a partner, basically for two reasons, SD69 seemed to appear not as cooperative or responsive as one would expect and joerg forcing the confrontation:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=89280

However, from this conversation on (at the latest) the partnership of Council and HiFo was poisoned, things escalated and after some sour times later, Woody finally resigned. This basically ruined HiFo since he was a spinal nerve if you will. He was a founder, held the bank account and has more knowledge about legal backgrounds in the US incl. taxes and
other obligations than anybody else (since we already scared off SD69). And I don't blame them (anymore).
Woodys' resignation:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=92438

But all lamenting doesn't help now, we can only draw our conclusions and help make the MC eV a success by doing better now. I have put all my efforts in the layout of MC eV's legal documents in order to provide a solid ground for our community and HiFo has spent ~500 Euro for charges and legal advise on that. Please let this money be well spent and do something good with the options at hand.

My suggestion at this point would be to hold a referendum that does the following:
- specify council duties so that it remains the major active party of community work AND honours the fact that Nokia got replaced by our own community organization, not only in regards to board
- rework council election rules incl. §6 (professional interests) and honoring the fact that Karma system is borked ATM, which results in inaccurate calculation of electorate and candidates. This may serve as an interim solution in hope of Karma system being repairable.

I mean, practically, you could also convince the General meeting to do so, given you're accepting MC eV rules; but in this particular case, a referendum may indeed be more appropriate since the change would be a major one.

I hope all this will be helpful to better understand what's going on. If any questions arise, esp. about the MC eV, please ask.

Best regards
--
Gido Griese/Win7Mac

First thank you for the welcome message.

Since we care of coop with different maemo entities this suggestion was debated during last council meeting...

Check the logs to make sure , and tell us if we were wrong , but note since it's summer the council was not complete :

http://mg.pov.lt/maemo-meeting-irclo...08-19.log.html

Anyway I feel we owe you an answer , let's do it here :

1/ The proposition seems to break the KISS principles so there are a few chances to have it approved in a raw, may it just proceed by iterations ?

2/ The council already has its rules , and if some of those rules are incompatible with other rules , just raise some alert , we'll consider them one after one

3/ The karma system is said to be working enough for pple to get more points and this page is open for suggestion http://wiki.maemo.org/Karma
so please community give feedback on the most important think to be fixed on this system we'll talk about it at next meetings.

4/ Since we Maemo Council represents the community, we'd like to have some feedback from maemo users in this thread to see where it could go...

It's still far from perfect, but I've updated the diagram again in order to hopefully come closer to following KISS principles...

*1) Board may change bylaws by unanimous decision
*2) General Assembly may change bylaws by 2/3 majority
*3) General Assembly may change General Regulations incl. Council Election Rules by 2/3 majority

That indeed would be great.

My layman's view:

• Council is the democratically elected representive body of the Maemo community, and is therefore mandated to make decisions on behalf of the community. Occasionally, a decision is of such magnitude that no such mandate can be reasonably assumed. In such cases, the decision is referred to the community via a referendum.
• MC e.V is a bureaucratic/legal body that exists to satisfy certain legal requirements. Its activities should extend only to those necessary to satisfy those requirements, and additionally any activities assigned to it by the council.

Diagram:

+1

ten chars

For a change, I like the idea, especially the General Assembly (regular members) concept. IMO, the Council and e.V surfed so far away from "general community's perception", that keeping things as proposed in marxian's diagram would just prolong the complete limbo, that we're currently in.

It seems to me, that some prominent members of Community like it as it is right now - they're jusy left in peace to do their projects, having quasi-functioning infrastructure. I think that those people don't realize that status-quo can't continue indefinitely, and that current state of things isn't "flat ground line" - it is a downhill, and left as it is, it will lead to slow death (including infrastructure, probably at the very end).
---

The only problem that I see with Win7Mac's diagram, is what we're going to do with Regular Members, that register once, and become inactive. Currently, only small promile of karma-enough users take part in voting. The sole number of votes in last council election was beyond pathetic.

Now, I'm afraid that after some time, we might end up with dozens "Regular Members" being inactive and unreachable, totally not interested in Community Affairs - leading to complete inability of making any decision via 2/3 of votes mechanism, effectively kastrating General Assembly's governing role, leading to same Council <-> e.V limbo that we're in, right now.

Solutions? I think that having small membership donation requiment (something like 3$ monthly) will keep only active members in the General Members section. 99% of uninterested users won't keep donating that, automatically dropping them into "Associated Members" group, fixing the problem.

Also, it would lead to constant-even if small - pool of money for upkeep. We can't count on free hosting forever.

/Estel

Edit: jump there

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...86#post1436486

this side "active members or vote related" topic

here is a copy for the record :

{

I like the idea of engagement but I would suggest to have donated once or twice a year will validate you as an active member and with no requirement on the amount to make sure we're not losing anyone ....

Like a 0,02 EUR heartbeat each 6 months period to match the MC election and we'll asking donators to promise to vote on next election ...

Pay to vote .. I am unsure this brilliant idea will be welcomed by all :-)


And I am wondering how many "active members" will this reach ?

}

I think that such donation amount shouldn't be painful, but still something that would make people uninterested (or interested once a year) cancel donation, when they lose interest.

Think shopping carts in supermarket (pardon the comparison) - if we would need to put 0.01 euro there, 80% of them would be abandoned somewhere inside shop. With 1 or 2 euro, people actually care to put them back in place.

Considering the absolutely incredibly astonishing number of votes in last election vs. eligible users, i think that maemo.org Community need to be motivated quite a bit, to clean after themselves upon leaving. Recurring payment of 0.02 euro once a year may leave us with 80% of inactive General Assembly for YEARS. Two or three euro donation per month is something different, and I think that 99% of users would cancel it, upo losing interest.

Not to mention, that it's also recurring donation - most of active users are donating to Maemo anyway, this or other way.

/Estel

I'm against anything that even smells like 'some people are more equal than others'. The 'General Assembly' (accepted by board :/) will likely end up comprising of people who are unrepresentative of the commumity at large. I believe in one person: one vote. If any individual wants a greater level of influence, let them run for council and see if their ideas get support in the form of votes.

The current 'limbo' seems to be mostly down to personal differences, and it looks to me like the proposed changes are an attempt to place the board on an equal footing with the council, and effectively render the council surplus to requirements, since the board, with support from their chosen 'General Assembly', will be able to do pretty much whatever they want.

That is what we have with HiFo now, that did not work out so well.

Having it this way it would be doomed to fail, decided to be the wrong type of legal entity for maemo.org in a couple of years, again. Take an example from other FOSS communities which make use of German e.V. - they organize their whole structure within, working groups dedicated to tasks with a leadership backing them with support, legally, financially and even with manpower if the tasks require it. Everything outside is first of all private and sometimes even questionable if you try to get funding by claiming to provide services to the community without being able to show a proper receipt.

The obligations within the eV need to be discussed publicly but not given lightly. Council rules are election rules, they should slightly adapt to our problems with the karma system, that a general meeting can change them is German Law and nothing one of us decided.
Please try to draw a new picture instead of trying to manipulate the colors of the current. We need to adapt to various changes in the future - a new device in demand of a working maemo infrastructure for example.

Keep in mind that there needs to be a way forward for us and not being stuck on a roundabout.