Hello Community,

The main part of this post is simplified to a few sentences. If you want more details, you can read the "footnotes" below. (This post has been posted to the Maemo Council blog now that that works, but it seems the scripts to automatically duplicate the post to forum and mailing list are still broken, so reposting here manually).

As many of you are aware, the Hildon Foundation Board of Directors has come to be filled with all unelected Directors. [1]

There has been some significant desire to have a reelection take place once the infrastructure migration issues were settled. [2]

Those infrastructure issues are now essentially settled - we are running on our own servers (not the interim Nemein hosting), and our volunteer techstaff maintains essentially all of *maemo.org. [3]

The Hildon Foundation Council has the authority to call for the elections of both the Council and the Board of Directors, if there is unanimous agreement by all members on the Council. [4]

It is the position of this Council, that this Council was always intended to count as the Hildon Foundation Council. And thus we have the authority to trigger both elections simultaneously. [5]

Furthermore, even besides this point, a careful consideration of the Bylaws and the timings of the resignations and appointments of Directors from the Board, indicates that an election should have already been triggered by the Bylaws themselves. [6]

Having taken all of the above into consideration, we find that the desires and wellbeing of the Community is best served by us calling for the election of both the Council and the Board [7]. We have waited until the last possible moment in our term to call for this election of both bodies, to give the Board a chance to get everything done within a reasonable timeframe and then call for an election in accordance to the intended democratic spirit of our Hildon Foundation on their own.

Thus, we hereby announce the elections for both the Hildon Foundation Board and the Council.

Election nominations are now open! Please send nominations to the mailing list maemo-community@maemo.org . Do not be afraid to nominate yourself or those you think are suitable for the positions. The last time we barely scraped together enough candidates for both Council and Board.

Voting timetable:
2013-03-22:
Referendum was Announced
2013-04-09:
Nomination Period for Board/Council Begins
2013-04-22:
Referendum Contemplation Period Ends
Referendum Voting Begins
2013-04-23:
Nomination Period for Board/Council Ends
Board/Council Candidate Contemplation Period Begins
2013-04-29:
Referendum Voting Ends
2013-04-30:
Board/Council Candidate Contemplation Period Ends
Board/Council Election Voting Begins
2013-05-07:
Board/Council Election Voting Ends

- Elections Eligibility Criteria -

Eligibility criteria will likely remain the same as they have been, in as much as feasible. There is, however, a modifying circumstance: *.maemo.org account registration and login has been broken for months, until recently; furthermore, karma is /still/ broken, with a significant number of members missing a significant amouht of karma.

We will manually calculate karma for candidates, so the restrictions on candidates are the same as they have been. However, we think it is infeasible to manually count the karma for every user who might be eligible to vote. So unless there is a serious volunteer effort to calculate everyone's karma by hand, we will treat all maemo.org accounts older than 3 months as eligible for this election only (if it comes to pass that karma is still broken by the next election cycle, it will be up to that Board/Council, and the Community then, to sort out what to do.)

If people with newer accounts think they ought to be eligible to vote (for example, you would have registered earlier but it was impossible to do so at the time because the system was broken), please contact the Council by either responding to this message or, preferably, by emailing council@maemo.org. (Please note, while we will try to process requests for eligibility inclusions as late as possible, we can only realistically guarantee that we'll manage to do it if you get it in a week before the vote for the referendum takes place - so before the 15th of this month.)

- Footnotes -

[1] All three of the original Directors left over time. Texrat/Randall had to depart early on, and Rob (originally in the non-director position of legal adviser) was appointed to replace him. Ivgalvez/Ivan had to leave because he had to relocate himself and his family from one country to another. Tim left shortly after Ivan due to reasons that would take longer to explain than appropriate for this footnote, but which can be found here. Woody and Jim were appointed to replace Ivan and Tim respectively.

[2] Thread where Council solicited Community opinion on the matter of Board re-election. Also here, where both Jim and Woody (two of the current three Board members) indicate support for reelection. Also, a few of the Community members who come to the Council meetings on IRC have indicated a desire to see a re-election happen for several meetings now.

[3] We still do not have a final contract signed with Nokia, but that should not in itself be hindered by a reelection, because the next Board can sign the contract just as easily, and we are starting to suspect they'll get it done faster.

[4] §X ¶2 (¶3 if you count the separated-by-pagebreak paragraph as two) of the Hildon foundation bylaws. (The Board can also trigger an election of both bodies, but that's beside the point.)

[5] There was some disagreement (from one current Board member that we know of) whether this Council officially counts as the Hildon Foundation that the Bylaws refer to previous Council. The alternative would be that the election for electing a Council and the first Hildon Foundation Board members at the same time did not mean for the Council to be the Hildon Foundation Council. This, to be frank, is clearly not what any member of the Community would expect, since the Council was written in to the Hildon Foundation Bylaws as a way to formally include the already existing Council for communication with Nokia into the new, Nokia-independent framework. Nor is it what was intended by the person mainly responsible for writing the bylaws (Woody, who is currently another member of the Board). Finally, if the Hildon Foundation Council is not the current Maemo Community Council, then A. the Board has failed to appoint or call for the elections of a Hildon Foundation Council for 6 months, and B. this makes no logical sense because the election criteria for the Hildon Foundation are determined by the Hildon Foundation Council according to the bylaws. So if a Council wasn't intended to be initiated at the same time as Hildon Foundation Board was, how is Hildon Foundation supposed to execute an election of either the next Board or a Council, if there is no Council to set the election eligibility criteria?

[6] We only ever had 3 Directors. The bylaws state that the Board can spend at most seven days in a row with less than 3 directors, else an election has to happen. §IV ¶6 (¶7 if you count the paragraph split into two pages two paragraphs) of the Hildon Foundation bylaws. This has occured. This post counts the dates and times of official (in-writing) resignations and acceptance-of-assignment statements of Directors. Other earlier posts, for example by joerg, in the same thread, indicate that the same gap of more than 7 days applies to the informal resignation and acceptance statements.

[7] A more verbose/formal announcement can be seen here, in the latest Council meeting.

---
Mentalist Traceur,
(Alexander Kozhevnikov),
Council Chair,
Posting on behalf of the Council

Lets do it

Community members who haven't been following the maemo Community mailing list will be pleased to learn that we have two [1][2] self-nominations for the Council election.

These are Edoardo "kerio" Spadolini and Kurt H Maier. I presume (in some cases) their profiles are at [3],[4] and [5],[6] respectively. Both their Karma appear to be too low to qualify, but there are issues with its calculation and Council have already declared that they will manually check karma for candidates (see post #1).

Glad to see "new blood", I'd rather not see any of the same faces that we already have.*
Not that most of them have done a poor job, far from it...
It's just best to make a fresh start, given all the bitter politics that has been happening.

Alas neither of these candidates seem to have a strong track-record of contributions, & neither seem to be terribly active "overall".
Plus it'd be good to have at least 1 candidate that has at least some experience with Harmattan/Nemo.
But I guess beggars can't be choosers.....

*with the exception of woody (maybe), assuming he hasn't developed a life-long allergic reaction to the whole process!

jalyst.

To be completely frank, if you are going to have an opinion on which type of candidates should fill up the positions then you should also have the guts to run for either body.

You fulfil your requirements so why not throw your name into the hat?

Yes, I vote for Jalyst.

I doubt I'd have the right skill-set to properly fulfill what's required of me, then there's the fact that I'm a terrible manager of time...
I just wouldn't have the time to do the role well, "&" pursue everything in my real life, frankly, I think you'd make a much better candidate! ;-P
I think it's important to (politely) express our thoughts about candidates, we need to objectively weigh-up the pros/cons for each, + there should be some basic minimum benchmarks*.
Although admittedly, a thread like this probably isn't the most methodical/scientific way to asses those "throwing their hat into the ring".

*I can't recall if there's already a mechanism in place for this?

I think you should both run.


FWIW: I do plan to run for Board, in spite of everything that's happened. I still think it's important to have committed community members in HiFo and on Council, with the interests of the community being their core focus. Such members are needed more now than ever before.


To criticism that least one community member has leveled against me of late about my "tendency overrun others": I'll simply state that past events (recent and long ago) have shown the conspiracy that I will "do what I think is best despite what others/community feels" is simply false. I have never demanded to do things my way, nor do I hold up things based on my objecting to it, even when I know I'm right. Two key examples:

Recent (verifiable by any current admin member):
As a sub-admin, I found the rigid enforcement of some policies for the current servers to at times be counter-productive to getting stuff done. I do understand why these policies are in place though, and agree it's likely best for the community to have such policies in the long run. (And I hope said measures and watchdogs remain in place.) As a Director, I could have sought to pull rank and override those rules. I instead voiced my opinion on the topic, but continued to work within the bounds set, and encouraged others to do the same for the betterment of the community.

Past (verifiable by past Council & searching public archives here):
When I was Council, I disliked the idea of current Council being in the running and in the selection process for Community Awards. I felt that those that had merit and desire to stand (at least 2 did, IMHO) should bow out of the selection process. I objected to the practice, and stood by my conviction by not entering my name into the CA. But I did not hold the process hostage, demand others do as I thought was right, nor "overrun" others. The majority voted to move ahead, and there seemed to be no vocal criticism of it from the community when asked at the time. (And it was asked before hand, several times, via mailing lists, blog posts, meeting minutes, and TMO posts.) If I were ever to "do what I though was right, in spite of others opinions", that would have been a prime time to do so, no?

I invite those considering me as a candidate to reflect on my past actions and deeds, and decide for themselves if I'm proper material for Board. I will note that if I do not win a seat via election I will step down, but will continue to offer my skills in any capacity that is of use to the community. Including as an administrator, or consultant to the Board or Council, as I did for the current Council and Board in the last term.

Seems to be no meaning of nomination if the Karma is to low?
As a new member I'll guess the Karma is down at bottom?

You can self-nominate and current Council will calculate your karma for you. A minimum of 100 is required to run so they'll inform candidates if they fulfil that requirement along with being a member for a minimum of 3 months.