In real politics, every time someone says "we need a strong mandate" I tend to believe that what we actually need is "strong transparency". Coincidence or not, this is also what I think is the situation here and now.

Rude behavior from Nokia? As far as I'm aware Nokia is paying the maintenance bills of maemo.org (and http://apps.formeego.org ) asking... (what?) in exchange. We are happy this community exists and we are happy helping it to find its path onto the future.

When the Council was created we had reasons to keep some managed discussions in private. Cases that come to mind were invitations to an event where Maemo announces were planned, a couple of controversial apps that needed to be pulled from Maemo Downloads, a quote for the MeeGo launch... and not much more, really. Most of the discussion happened directly and transparently here and in the maemo-community mailing list, between Council members and whoever else wanted to be involved.

Now... announcements are not Maemo related, individuals can publish apps to Nokia Store and Qt Developer Network and Nokia Developer have both developer communities with ambassadors and champions.

Does this mean that maemo.org is irrelevant? Not at all! There is something precious and unique here, and it would be good for everybody to find the way to update it and evolve it further.

Does this mean that the Maemo Community Council is irrelevant? I don't know the answer - but in any case I believe that transparency is more relevant. I'll do my best helping on transparency.