As sjgadsby has so clearly and patiently explained the Community Council has two roles:

• a representative body to facilitate communications between Nokia (and, I guess, other stakeholders) and "the community"[1]
• a facilitating entity within the community to ensure that people know what other people are doing (e.g. to prevent duplication of work) and help people find resources for big projects like CSSU.[2]

The Community Council is empowered to speak on the community's behalf when Nokia ask something like "who should we sponsor to the next Maemo/MeeGo summit/conference?" It was devised when Nokia were asking many questions on maemo-developers@ and maemo-community@ which no-one felt empowered to answer on behalf of everyone else. The Community Council is therefore a set of people selected from within the community who the community say "these people can speak for us" and largely meant that members like Texrat, javispedro, myself, timsamoff, GeneralAntilles, lardman, gcobb, achipa and the (grossly unfairly) unelected sjgadsby continue to do their normal behaviour and offer their usual opinions but with the collective voice of the community behind us.

However, the Maemo community has recently been facing issues which the background and ongoing activities of the council members was not sufficient. This is where the facilitation role comes into it. MohammadAG wants to spearhead the creation of a Fremantle Community SSU? The council helps with whatever he needs.

So, with the topic being the future of *.maemo.org (and as lma noted, maemo.org is far more than just another vBulletin instance), there are two concerns:

• What do we do about funding, infrastructure, resourcing of the websites & services on maemo.org?
• What are the possible futures of Maemo, and how can we achieve them?

Saying "the Council needs to lead us" is entirely missing the point. Someone needs to come up with concrete, viable proposals which can be discussed. The council can assist with the publication and collaboration of that, as - I'm sure - anyone vested in Maemo will also publicise.

Once there is a popular, actionable plan for either of these two items, the council's power is to say "this is the roadmap" and then assist with the publication and collaboration of that, as - I'm sure - anyone vested in Maemo will also publicise.

The big "but" is, as smoku alluded to, no-one has come forward with a plan, nor even a plan to have a plan. It's unrealistic to expect five volunteers to be super CEOs of an amorphous, unruly and - if this, and so many other, threads are anything to go by - increasingly ungrateful mob.

The sad fact is that there may not be an ultimate end-game beyond "let's move to COBS for autobuilder, consolidate and reduce infrastructure costs as much as possible; have funding drives; introduce adverts and assist the CSSU as much as possible". That's still a lot of work, a lot of planning, and a lot of coordination. Who's volunteering to do it?



[1] The definition of "the community" has always been a little contentious, but my definition is "if you think you're in it, you're in it". Admittedly, this makes external definitions hard which is why we fall back on maemo.org accounts.

[2] Of course, one doesn't need to be on the Community Council to do that, but one doesn't need to be on the Community Council to do anything. You don't need its permission. You don't need its sanction. If you have a good idea, JFDI.