Hello community!

Lately we have had two resignations from the Hildon Foundation Board. As some have already noted, the Board bylaws state that the Board has seven days to fill a vacancy if the number of Board members falls below 3. If they fail to do so in that time period, an election is triggered.

As you presumably all also noticed, Rob ("SD69") has now appointed two replacement Board Directors, Craig Woodward ("woody14619") and Jim Jagielski, a person who has not been a member of our community, but is an experienced figure in the FOSS world as a whole, and might bring valuable experience to the table. Woody had the recommendation of the Council for this position for a while now, and still does. Jim Jagielski we are unsure about at this time, and thus have no formal Council position for or against. Woody has accepted his appointment, although he expressed a slight reservation about its validity as it was not done at an official Board meeting, something which the Board has mostly insisted should be the case for decisions made in the past. We do not presently know if Jim Jagielski has or hasn't accepted his appointment. (It's worth noting woody14619 ran in the Board election and was one of the closest runners-up.)

That summary out of the way, we bring this to the Community for discussion because we wish to gauge what the Community opinion is about the current situation with the Board: the only member left was appointed earlier, one has just been appointed and accepted, and one has been appointed and might accept their appointment shortly, leaving a completely unelected Board? Furthermore, how does the Community feel about the Board having members from outside the Community? Would the Community members like the Board to hold an election in the near future to validate itself as a Community-elected body again? If so, how soon - immediately, as soon as the Nokia transfer of infrastructure assets is completed, in a certain time period?

And finally, the Bylaws give the Community Council the power to trigger an election for both bodies. Would the Community members like us to exercise this power, if the Board does not initiate its own reelection in the time that the Community would like to see it happen? (On this note, keep in mind that the Council has to call for its own reelection fairly soon anyway - we had our first session in 2012-11-09. This means that if we the current Council are to do this, it will have to be relatively soon, because we have until 2013-04-09 to announce the election. Granted, the Council that follows this one could do the same thing, but it would mean two elections' worth of nomination, contemplation, and voting periods' time before such a move can be undertaken instead of one.)

Sincerely,
Alexander Kozhevnikov
Council Chair
[This post is made on behalf of everyone actively in the current Council]

My personal opinion is that the community should have a say in those who represent it on the Board. I say that as the only member of the current Board to have received any votes for that position (I placed 4th in the last election).

I would personally like to see the Board announce elections as soon as it reasonably can, given the current negotiations with Nokia and providers. That said, this will very likely result in a co-election with Council and Board at one time, as was done in the previous cycle. That (again IMPO) would be the least strenuous way to handle this, for the community, the new infrastructure, and the governing bodies involved.

To that affect, I will reflect that to the Board as a new member of that body. My opinion may change based on information I'm not aware of at the moment. If such reasons are valid, I will strive make them as known as I can without breaching my duties as a Board member. My hope is to bring a bit more transparency to the Board where it is reasonable to do so.

Finally, I would like to say that I do not know Jim Jagielski (the other Board appointee) personally. Like many I've spoken with, I am also wary of inviting non-Maemo persons into leadership positions, including the Board. However, from what I've reviewed of his current and past careers, I see a great deal of potential benefit to having him on board. How that will play out is yet to be seen, but I feel the potential benefits may be worth the risk in this case.

Right now, I am continuing my focus on assisting in stabilizing the infrastructure to allow voting in the near future, as Council elections are upcoming in any case in the next couple months. Once I get formal word form the Board and am added to the proper mailing-lists I will no doubt have more to say (and more work to do) in this arena.

Kind invitation to everybody member of maemo community to please post their thoughts on the topic here.

Thanks
jOERG

For those who loaded the page before you saw this post, note that I had to edit the post a little bit after the first posting because I hit "enter" on accident before the final wording tweaks.

Personal thoughts on the issue, as a Community member as opposed to elected Councilmember:

I myself think that, while Nokia has yet to sign off the DNS control and other assets to Hildon Foundation, we should avoid disrupting the Board more than it already has been. However, after that is all done and settled, I, if I was in the community looking at this situation, would want to have the election held right after that's done - if the people currently appointed do a good job and earned the Community's trust and respect, they will likely get re-elected. If they didn't, they likely won't.

In the long run, I would also like to see if we can pass an amendment to the bylaws that says that if either body (board or council, but especially Board) has more than 50% of the Directors resign, it triggers an automatic re-election. Whether or not I agree with Rob's current appointment choices (and I tentatively guess that they are good ones, but we'll see how it plays out), the idea that a single left-over Director can repopulate the Board entirely on their own is, frankly, something that should be worrisome for any entity that expects some semblance of democracy to prevail indefinitely in its organization.

More thoughts will be posted in response to whatever gets/got posted after this.

To everybody who wants this community to keep on: Please comment at this thread and say your thoughts clearly. We need to know that there is enough interest to continue this work, and to finally be able to walk on our own. This won't come without everybody's help and every bit counts, be it financal help, or more importantly administrative help.

The greatest thing you can do for the community right now is to think hard and weigh the possibility of running for board, if there will be an election, or council, for which the election will be in about 8 weeks.

I know from myself that it was a very hard decision to apply, and I did that only after continuous delays of the election, on the last minute. So now is the time to start nurturing the idea in your head and come with a blazing candidate declaration in 4 weeks time.

We absolutely need enough candidates and a big electorate base for next council and/or board election to legitimize what we are doing, and shield ourselves from difficult situations like this, where 2 council members and all 3 board members resigned, in the future.

Thanks for reading,

Michael Demetriou
member of the Maemo Community Council

I think these are critical times, and there is no room for extra bureaucracy.

I think the proposed people to Hildon Foundation seem like sensible choices, and IMO go with them without organizing an election. Delays due to elections is not something that benefits our community right now.

And just in case, perhaps we can have a gentlemen's agreement that elections can be organized later in the unlikely event that Foundation takes actions that cause much gnawing of teeth in the community.

been caught in R.L. issues for the past few weeks and completely missed out on Maemo

why am i not surprised to come back and see... board re-election

in a way, i'm just echoing ajalkane's reflection on the opportunity of a re-election during a time where the community needs continuity above everything else.
i guess getting Woody on-[to the ]board (pun intended) is probably a move in that direction; Woody knows the community and is (at least somewhat?) familiar with NOKIA & All (Nemein and so on)

but... what about Jim Jagielski
i had a quick look @ the wikimedia page Woody provided the link to and... with all due respect, WTF?
Apache? RedHat? except that the guy hopefully may not show up with a Lumia device, i'm not sure what his interest in Maemo may be

maybe i missed out on a lot more in the last couple weeks, but does Maemo meanwhile aspire to an Apache scale "openness"?

EDIT: Joerg, hope to be online the next couple days; maybe we can touch base?

Lets be honest. The Maemo community isn't what it used to be, the council has handled roughly 99.9% of what was required for the migration, the HiFo was collecting very minimal and the actual cost of most things were covered by Nokia and other larger providers/companies. The HiFo is a waste of time and resources. The council itself should simply open its own NFP paypal (or other method) style of deposits, find an easy way to file the taxes for it (which is a simple tax form so long as the books are in order). With the devices out there dwindling and the, what is a good word, impotence of activity from the HiFo, it would just be a waste to go out of the way to refill the positions and full control would be better off handed to the council, who, quite honestly, performs 99.9% of the duties anyways. I'm sure they can handle the extra 00.1% of that HiFo workload.

I'd rather want Jim Jagielski to make a public statement about his motivation to be a HiFo board member. If he really wants to, I didn't see a confirmation so far. And that should happen before the council meeting, so the community/council members to have time to make up their minds. I would also like to have more rationale from SD69, beyond "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" vaporware.

IIRC HiFo's major goal was to "officially" present the community, so Nokia to have a legal entity to which to transfer the Maemo assets. I wonder what has changed and why. And how will help an outsider who has(IMO) NFC about Maemo with achieving that goal in the remaining several weeks(or even less) before Nemein shuts down the servers.

Don't get me wrong, the only thing I have "against" that guy is the lack of any information. And I don't think a wikipedia "CV" page is the way he should be presented to the community. Nothing more, nothing less.

On the other hand we are in very critical period, so I think the best for Maemo and the community is to postpone all the political stuff after the migration to community driven infra is complete (or at least secured).

I think somebody who has founded an OSS non-profit corporation, and done it successfully, would help us right now. Technical knowledge of maemo is not necessary because we have plenty of those people around. What we don't have is someone with the experience of managing an OSS non-profit corporation. So this is why I would have Jim on the Board, although I wouldn't have him on the Foundation's Council which is more membership based.

This choice of Board member, when there was no one other than Woody from the community who stepped up, is not a change in direction. It's someone who can help us get to where we want to be. We are still trying to transfer the maemo assets from Nokia.

I suggest people look at his personal page: www.jimjag.com.

I considered an election at this time but decided it is best to move on since there will be one later this year.