Bylaws § 7 (5):
Indeed this statement is binding. Those rulings are restricted by national + EU law, the Bylaws and General Regulations, respectively by the defined responsibilities/duties/tasks of both bodies therein. To avoid future distractions, General Regulations very well may be more precise about councils' functions than they're today (as already discussed here, since 2 months).

Bylaws give the structure, General Regulations organise Community life.
If council stays an entity of MC eV, only General Regulations may need adoption, depending on what exactly the referendum or insights from this thread will bring up.
If council gets disbanded or decides to part to outlaw land, bylaws have to be amanded which needs court approval, costs a fee of probably 20-50€ and takes 2-8 weeks to get through. General Regulations also would need adoption since major parts otherwise would be redundant or not within byaws.

Whatever this referendum will bring up, I'm convinced noone of the 'elitist' regular members will prevent it from beeing carried into effect by GA, which either way would be required, according to MC eV Bylaws (EDIT: unless Council election rules only are changed; that's what a 'regular' referendum can do without anybody approving it.)

One quick note: There's a reason that most of these questions have not been answered. In particular, as has been eluded to several times, it's often a fact that negotiations with a company must not be discussed before a public announcement is made about the final results. Legally, those "in the know" on this are legally obligated to not speak of it before that announcement is made. With that in mind:

• An announcement is forthcoming has happened. You may have noted a few changes already on the web site that are also part and parcel of said coming announcement.
• It has already been announced that the MCeV has been created. It fully exists, and has full documentation on the wiki. More to come on that as it finishes spinning up.
• MCeV currently has no actual holdings that I'm aware of, Maemo or otherwise. Though I am not on it's board, so may not know of some things.
• HiFo needs (for legal reasons) to either cease operations or undergo a relocation within the US if it wishes to continue operating. Since relocation is a given, it made more sense to those involved to relocate fully to where the servers were, thus the idea of the e.V.
• HiFo and MCeV board members were nearly one in the same last I checked. As such here is little to "negotiate", more to "navigate".
• There are several legal items to navigate, including how to properly transfer ownership of HiFo assets and legally spin down that entity. MCeV has it's own legal issues to navigate in preparation to take on it's role, including establishing a bank account.

Understand, corporate movement is often at done at a glacial pace. Most things require papers to be filed with courts or governing bodies. Almost everything needs to be triple checked to be sure it's all legit. Just look at how long it took MS to "acquire" Nokia's cellular division. And that was with teams of lawyers being paid 24/7 to work on just that merger.

I hope this helps clarify where we are, and why the boat is pointed in the direction it currently is.

Edit: Updated announcement bit. Apparently the announcement went out while I was away. Congrats to all involved.

Not quite true. If there were an overwhelming desire for HiFo to remain, there is a way to make that happen. It would be very inefficient, and eat about half the funding we have, and would require a few US citizens from here to step up and want to take on the legal liabilities involved. But if it were the will of the community to do that, it's quite doable. I just don't see that strong of a will to keep it on, and frankly the alternative is far more efficient and has a core group ready already in position.

Which is, in a legal sense, true. But it's not if they see HiFo/MCeV as Nokia. It's that they see them as "the competition", which must be fought against to "free Maemo" from "the corporation". The problem being, much like a house pet, Maemo can not simply be "freed to the wild". HiFo/MCeV fights to continue to provide a home instead.

To be clear: I was in the process of resigning when this issue came up. I was on IRC daily, and in regular contact with you, the Board, and the rest of tech staff. Your interpretation of the events may have been what you intended to present, but it was not how it was seen by anyone else on the Board, myself included.

You presented an option which every person on the Board interpreted as you seeking reimbursement for the service of doing server backups. When the cost was questioned you said we would either pay it or backups would cease. That was how I, and everyone else in that conversation besides you apparently, interpreted that conversation.

When 4 out of 5 people involved interpret something one way, it's rather clear where the fault lies. (I'll give you a hint: It's generally not the 4 doing something wrong.)

In any case, the situation was resolved when another solution that didn't cost a regular maintenance fee was found and implemented. You found that resolution to be "a coup", and started a personal war over it, which you continue to this day. You in fact called out this "coup" earlier in this very thread.

But for the sake of resolution: Let's take you on your word, that you were merely offering to act as a conduit for a paid service. Why then would someone finding and implementing a free alternative, saving the community a monthly fee, upset you so? Wouldn't that be a win for the community?

you're again forcing me to publish non-public conversation between council, techstaff resp me, HiFo, which would clearly prove you wrong, even on minor details like "I was in the process of resigning when this came up" but of course even more on the complete statement. I dunno if you do this by malicious intent or simply due to a weird form of amnesia, and I don't care anymore. I'm not interested anymore in that BS, I divorced from maemo at large, mainly because of you, win7mac, chemist spreading lies all the time, acting obtuse and hostile and generally _never_ assuming good will on the other side nor showing good will on your side. Your BS explanation about "council and HiFo being competitors" plainly exposes this mindset.
I'm not wasting any more time in such debate.
fare well maemo

You're accusing the other side of doing what you are doing too (with your post)

In case anybody missed it, there's a dedicated thread, where I already answered foobars questions to my best knowledge.
All board-related info/talk happens in "[Board] Updates on HiFo & MC e.V." thread, please subscribe:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=93476

Let's focus on topic: refendum
Do we really want to abolish Council? Then we need to assign their tasks to another (work)group within MC eV, to GA or board.
How would that be helpfull?
Besides that I believe todays' council is doing quite well, from an objective POV, demand for an official community (associated) member representation seems totally legit.

Hopefully a moderator shows some mercy and sweeps some of the OT over here or here ...thedead1440, you still around?

Tasks? Like doing what?

General housekeeping tasks mostly
Check the Council blogs on http://maemo.org/community/council/ for details.

The most prevalent things that I see in Council meeting logs, is fixing problems that some parts of Council (or Council as a whole) created. Kinda reminds me of body bravely fighting problems, that doesn't exist in other bodies.

I agree that we need people doing "housekeeping tasks", but I don't think that we need elected mandate for housekeeping. It could "just work" as volunteers task forces - additional benefit is that, without mandate of being elected, none of the volunteer will ever get an idea of having mandate to "rule" maemo, as we have seen with some aspects of Council in the past.

/Estel