Hi everyone,

Please see the below letter of resignation from the Hildon Foundation Board of Directors.

I also sent this to the Community mailing list and will be posting it on the HF website.

Thank you,
Tim

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4 March 2013

From: Tim Samoff
Maemo Community Member
Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Hildon Foundation

To: The Hildon Foundation
The Maemo Community

Dear Hildon Foundation & Maemo Community,

This letter will serve as my formal resignation both as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Hildon Foundation, as well as a member in general. I am saddened to have to do this, but my vision of the Foundation as well as that of the Maemo Community has changed since being elected. Please read on in order to gain more context of why I am doing this…

Over the past months, much has been accomplished in terms of finding a permanent home for the Maemo Community. Thanks to the Maemo Community at large, we have pulled in enough money to handle server migration(s) and even pay for server hosting if and when needed. We were also able to negotiate free transference of ownership of the Maemo discussion forums (talk.maemo.org) and purchase a community-owned license of vBulletin (the software in which the forums run). Of course, much of my own personal thanks go to the hard-working Maemo Community Council who were able to find many creative and viable options for collocating and hosting the maemo.org infrastructure.

But, all of these successes aside, I have come to a new, personal understanding of the viability of a Board of Directors acting in conjunction with a Community Council at this time. While I whole-heartedly feel like an organization like the Hildon Foundation would be a positive force in the open source world, I think that the relationship between the Board of Directors and the Community Council has been counter-productive. As a nonprofit entity that must operate according to bylaws and legal formalities (as well it should in order to comply with certain governing laws), the processes have been less than efficient. Likewise, as a former Community Council member myself (two terms as a member and one term as the Chair), I have realized that a Council more than adequately prepared to run an ecosystem such as the Maemo Community. Similarly, operation of the Hildon Foundation — again, for me personally — has been less than the rewarding experience that I was hoping it would be.

Unfortunately, since the original Hildon Foundation Board of Directors was elected in October 2012 we have lost two elected members, leaving Rob Bauer (appointed) and myself (elected). Now, as I resign, only one person — who is not an elected member — will remain “in charge.” While I have all confidence in Mr. Bauer’s expertise and enthusiasm, I must emphatically make my stance on the fact that it behooves the Maemo Community to demand that other Maemo Community members occupy the remaining seats. This Foundation was created for a purpose: to aid in the continuance of the Maemo Community. To instate any other agenda would be counterintuitive to the original goals. Furthermore, I feel that the Maemo Community Council should be given more responsibility in general operations of the maemo.org ecosystem. While a more Foundation-oriented approach is one that I would typically agree with, I don’t think it is what Maemo currently requires.

I still consider myself a die-hard Maemo Community Member; I still believe in the idea of the Hildon Foundation and I desire that it succeed. Although, at the moment, I feel like the Community Council has more at stake in helping the community survive. The Council is agile and responsive and can do more quickly than a Foundation-approach could ever manage.

In the end, this is completely my opinion. Also, I have to admit that my own time constraints have been detrimental to my position on the Board. I hope that all future members understand the duties and commitments better than I did.

Lastly, I currently manage the Board’s website at my webhost. I am more than happy to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. I will also gladly transfer any ownership and applicable files and software to whoever requests to manage it after me.

Thank you to everyone who has been involved in aiding in the survival of Maemo.

Sincerely,

Tim Samoff
Maemo Community Member