This is the first I've heard of a possible problem with the voting, SD69, so thank you for bringing it to our attention. Last month I enquired about voting on the council thread and was advised that it should be fine, so I really wasn't expecting any problems But I understand things are changing around here...

We were expecting voting to commence some stage around middle of September. Are you able to provide us with some indication of the likelihood that we will not now be able to use the normal council voting mechanism? Is it still possible, or should we accept it is unlikely? We don't really know what is going on with the move away from Nokia so really we're relying on council to keep us informed

In terms of a Plan B, there is only polls on the maemo.org forum left as an option. Anything else will remove the voting and accountability away from maemo.org. You may remember from the first coding competition that there was controversy around the forum polls as multiple votes were being received from the same IP addresses, and members were asking friends to sign up and vote for their application. In that instance we requested the council and Reggie's help to adjust the results by removing duplicate IP votes and those new to the forum, and in the following year used the council voting mechanism to help reduce any possibility of fraud.

In case of needing to use the forum polls as our Plan B, we will require the help of Reggie and council. Reggie can run queries on the raw data retrieved from the site database, but the results will only be made available to council. As was the case back then, I would need to liaise with someone from council to receive the adjusted results. We would also need to allow Reggie the time to work through the polls as there is a lot of information to get through and it's important it isn't rushed.

So I think my questions back to council would be the following:

• How likely is it that we will require a Plan B for voting?
• Is there any reason you can see that we couldn't fall back on forum polls as our Plan B?
• Would council be able to reach out to Reggie to check willingness/availability to adjust the polls? (I can reach out, but it keeps it official through you guys..)
• I'll need a point of contact on council to work with Reggie to retrieve the results and provide them, or a subset of the results, for announcing as winners. Will that be ok?

Around 10th of September works out well as the competition closes then, but there's voting on follow on after. So depending what happens with the voting (see the latest news from SD69 above ..) we could still be using your brain power - so make sure you get plenty of rest on your vacation

And big thanks to Wonko, Sap, and OVK for the donations - much appreciated