MWKN Weekly News: 11 March 2013


Tim Samoff resigns from Hildon Foundation

The Hildon Foundation has had a rather bumpy start to its stewardship of maemo.org (which should become official this month with the final infrastructure migrations and the end of negotiations with Nokia): resignation of a string of board members, friction with the council and members of the community, and drawn-out negotiations with Nokia over the transfer of ownership of maemo.org.

Despite these issues, the primary short-term goal of ensuring that the lights remain on for maemo.org looks to be accomplished. Fundraising efforts have collected more than $4000 in donations, the new server hardware from Nokia has been installed at a colocation in IPHH (essentially for free!), volunteer sysadmins have been found, and the DNS change to point to the new infrastructure - which some very dedicated people have been hard at work for months getting set up. All of which involved a great deal of time and energy (particularly from the community council) - should be completed this week.

Unfortunately, the bumps continue. Citing a change in vision of the role of the Hildon Foundation and the Maemo Community, timsamoff announced his resignation from the Hildon Foundation last week: This leaves - the unelected - sd69 as the only member of the Hildon Foundation Board. Replacement appointments for both Tim and ivgalvez (who resigned from the board in February due to an international relocation and the related time commitments) have been found (see the next story), but, according to the by-laws, an election sholud be triggered if fewer than 3 board positions are occupied for more than 7 days (Ivan resigned on February 17th).

On a personal note, I'm sad to see Tim leaving the board (though I completely sympathize with his reasons). I've know Tim for most of the existence of the Maemo community and served a number of terms with him on the Maemo Community Council. He was always a pleasure to work with and his optimistic, forward-thinking approach and clear-headed competence is an asset the Hildon Foundation Board will be a lesser thing without.


New Hildon Foundation Board of Directors appointees

With the resignation of timsamoff from the Hildon Foundation Board last week, and ivgalvez's resignation in February, there are two vacant spots to fill on the board. sd69 announced two appointments in Tim's resignation thread on Talk: Having fewer than 3 board members for a period longer than 7 days should trigger a new election cycle (a normal board term being one year). The period between Ivan's resignation (February 17th) and woody14619's appointment - which is, as of yet, not official - exceeds 7 days. As the council will be having a new election for the next term in April coordinating a new board election to coincide with the upcoming council election seems wise. Especially, as joerg_rw points out, considering the bruises the board's reputation has taken during the infrastructure migration.



In this edition...

1. Front Page
   • Tim Samoff resigns from Hildon Foundation
   • New Hildon Foundation Board of Directors appointees
2. Development
   • Porting Harmattan apps to Sailfish and NemoMobile
   • Qt for iOS preview
3. Devices
   • Petition to get Nokia to bug fix released for N9