Original Link: http://hildonfoundation.org/board-mi...ruary-17-2013/



Attending:

• Tim Samoff / timsamoff (video)
  
• Rob Bauer / SD69 (audio only)
  
• Iván Gálvez Junquera / ivgalvez (chat only)

Finances (including bank account issues):

• Wire transfer went through, but the transfer didn't have the account number... All issues were resolved, except that it wasn't all of the funds.
  
• Cosimo (via email): Amount transferred: $2,130.00 out of $3374.83... Where is the rest of the money?
  • Cosimo has transferred the $2,120.00 some weeks ago from personal PayPal account to personal bank account in preparation of the international transfer to the HF bank account.
    
  • The rest will be transferred via PayPal as soon as the HF PayPal account is linked to the HF bank account (the HF PayPal account can't accept money as long as it isn't linked; donations or transfers are there, but they can't be used yet).
  
  
• Cosimo: What is the status of linking the new PayPal account?
  • The HF PayPal account was linked to the HF bank account the week before last week. PayPal usually transfers two small amounts (for example $0,02 and $0,05) which the bank holder has to verify in the bank account.
    • The routing and account numbers are needed.
  
  
• Cosimo: Where is the money?
  • Three places:
    • In the HF bank account.
      
    • In HF PayPal account (donations coming in from 8. February on), frozen until linked to HF bank account.
      
    • In personal PayPal account (donations made until 8. February).

Nokia contract issues:

• Still no final word from Nokia about the transfer of ownership.
  • Why aren't they finishing the process? Puts all of community in a difficult position.
    • Iván: I think that might be there is lack of communication between different Nokia departments. Mokia said that domain transference should be doable between Tim and Eero. (However Nokia didn't know anything about DNS problems.)
      • Tim will complete this task this week.
        
      • There may be potential DNS issues surrounding this task.
        
      • Iván: I suggest you both to send a new email to try to push the domain/DNS issues.
        • The problem is that connections to maemo.org will go to Nokia DNS.
        
        
      • According to Council... (DocScrutinizer05) I today came up with a plan to gather more control over our DNS records (the stuff converting from URL -> IP). I talked about it with Eero and Merlin and we agreed to give it a try and see if Nokia will agree to do it. The basic idea is to.
  
  
• Big problem: Nemein is still in control until Nokia transfers legal ownership to us.
  
• The contract between HF and Nokia still has a couple of sticking points.
  • Nokia/Hildon relationship still needs to be clarified.
    
  • What is still something that needs to be under NDA?
    
  • Nokia keeps removing software distribution tools from the agreement. Why?
    • The PoC at Nokia told us that SDK will be available to redistribute from our side, while OVI Store or other commercial software won't.
      
    • Rob will follow up with Nokia PoC and Nokia lawyer about these issues.
  
  
• Need to deal with current issues concerning Nemein.
  • Rob to contact them about our current situation.
    
  • Tim to contact Henri Bergius about extending patience due to lack of Nokia response.

Appointing of new infrastructure maintenance positions:

• Christian Ratzenhofer (merlin1991): Voted in unanimously.
  
• Craig Woodward (Woody14619): Voted in unanimously.

Migration issues (including those questions brought up by Eero, copied below):

• OSUOSL: Very reputable.-- No contact in last week.
  
• IPHH: Very reasonable terms (free).
  • Will send contract soon.
  
  
• Rob to execute contract if the terms (especially about the hardware) are agreeable.
  • If IPHH's contract is good, we will go with them.
  
  
• Hosting contract will be needed in regards to collocated contract.
  
• The Board feels that the Council should solicit community opinions more often about issues such as these. In this particular case, the Board doesn't see the Cuncil reaching out to the community enough. (There have been a couple of complaints from Community members.) To be clear, the migration decision isn't solely the Council's, but the community's decision at large... The Council is in place to facilitate these community-wide operations, but not mandate them.

Board and Council relationship/dynamic:

• Council is free to vote to appoint repo maintainers as long as they're community members (and not paid).
  • To be clear, this is only for maemo.org, not any other domain or project that Hildon Foundation might do.
  
  
• This does not apply to SysAdmins, which the Foundation would like to be involved in choosing and accepting for roles.
  
• Currently, there is only one manager: Joerg and one administrator: Falk. In the future, we hope that there are several SysAdmins.

Ubuntu:

• Canonical to release Ubuntu "mobile" source code soon (see: Ubuntu for Phones).
  • Rob to send email to community in order to see how open the Ubuntu code is and how it might fit with Maemo.
  
  
• We need to figure out if there are duplicated efforts, etc.
  • Can we work with them to accompish any mutual goals?
    • For instance, can we supply extras?

Iván's resignation from the Board and Council:

• Will send resignation later.* Need to find replacement.
  • Iván: A few proposals: Cosimo Kroll (obviously), Craig Woodward, and Alexander Kozhevnikov (Mentalist Traceur).

Meeting concluded.

I wouldn't want to get involved in Board vs Council but I've complained to Council about a number of things and from what I've seen its the Board that needs to wake up and smell the coffee.

SD69 came on the last Council meeting and reading from logs he said for Board meetings to visit:
I visited that site at 1800 GMT and guess what there was no public access. It is downright INSULTING to give out a time and location and then not give necessary details required to attend the meeting.

As a Community member all I can see is a Council working their a*ses off to make things work and a Board that knows next to nothing technically but still interferes in things with road-blocks and for the primary objective of handling finances doing a poor job.

Tell me where is the EU bank account or flattr for donations or the OVI account? Seems donations are not that required anymore since IPHH is a pretty good option but where was even one BoD on the donations thread to inform about it? It was left to joerg_rw to do so and I asked him why take so long and he showed me his task list and it seems the Board have been doing comparatively very little. A Donors wall that was last updated nearly a month ago! Wow you expect donations but don't update the Community on its status?

The Board needs to remember you are elected to ensure the Community lives on by facilitating donations etc and NOT to be the new Nokia like some of you seem to be keen to follow. Why not solicit opinions yourself via TMO etc instead of pushing it to a clearly over-worked Council? Where is your thread on TMO or ML asking for opinions? Aren't your'll going to do the pay-outs if ever required or sign contracts?

Where is the proper procedures that if maemo infra is migrated to OSUOSL, an American institution, all EU laws would be complied with and not infringed on since except for TMO all other infra is based in EU?


One important edit:

The Council or individual Councillors can be interacted with directly on IRC on #maemo-meeting etc so anybody can give their opinions to them but I ask Board where is your public channels except for an email address? I had to canvass the Council meeting logs to know about the Board's impeding meeting.

Why aren't there public announcements if the meeting is public? Communication from Board needs to be improved pronto IMO...

Also if the Board intends to send an open letter of sorts to Ubuntu or any other organization please consult with the Community as we all know how mangled the Jolla discussions became due to various factors.

I have no idea why there was no public access; I'm sure it was a mistake and unintentional as I've never heard any Board member express an opinion otherwise. Despite the unfortunate implication; I passed on all the details and information I received.

Edit:

I agree there should be public announcement of Board meetings.

The Board does not intend to contact Ubuntu at the present time. We intend for interested members of the community to do a technical and OSS assessment of the source code released on the 21st.

Rob is correct. The "private" meeting was unintentional, as it is a little hard to figure out how to use concert-oh (the servide that we use) in this regard. I know what to do now, though, so the next publicly announced meeting will be accessible. Sorry for any grief.

Tim

Its been 6 days from my last post here and the 2 remaining BoDs have responded only to my point of the meeting being private.

So a few more updates:

- The Donor's Wall is still NOT updated. 21/01/13 was the last update; exactly more than a month ago.

- There is still NO canvassing of opinions from the Community by the BoD regarding migration etc. Thank goodness for people like joerg_rw and Falk (warfare) who have put migration #2 in motion.

- I'll link my post in Ivan's resignation thread here too so that the BoDs can respond centrally.

- There is still no clarifications issued for posts in the "Open Letter to Jolla" threads whereby it was asked if and to what extent did the BoDs have communications with Jolla and/or its representatives prior to the open letter.

- The last point I did some canvassing of information on my own and it turns out that the BoD were primarily responsible for fudging up talks with Jolla by acting big-headed and thinking they had a "Community" behind them who they could trade with Jolla in return for sponsorship. Jolla seem to have asked the BoD to be honest regarding the current situation but it seems the BoD were too busy exaggerating their influence to put Jolla off dealing with them.

One point that struck me was that Jolla don't seem to have asked for any NDA for discussions but it was the BoD who wanted a NDA in place.

The Open Letters were a PR stunt so that the Community-at-large couldn't blame the BoDs for messing things up and would cast Jolla as the bad guys here.

Clarifications would be much desired instead of allowing doubts to be festered on.