The main issue here is that because of HiFo's by-laws, SD69 was claiming that the current Council is the Maemo Community Council with no powers over HiFo.

By bringing MCC in line as HiFo Council, such arguments become void and the Council remains as before only now it definitely has the power to call for elections for HiFo's Board. There will still be only 1 Council acting for the Community not multiple Councils.

Along the way there are 2 proposed amendments too that if there are less than 5 candidates then a new election is called but the amendment seeks to make it if there are even exactly 5 candidates, not all become unelected appointees. Similar for a situation of 3 candidates.

Think of this referendum as a way to iron out any loopholes in Council regulations so that Council always remains on the side of the Community and isn't hijacked by a few vested interests

FOA what will the HFC do? What'll be its competences?

The HFC will do what the Community Council did, but will report to/liaise with the Hildon Foundation Board, as the Community Council liaised with Nokia.

To be clear: This referendum is not to create a separate Council, or cause 2 Councils to exist.

IMHO, There were never 2 Councils. This proposal is to fix the MCC voting rules so they:

A> Do what the community probably wanted them to do (elections or extensions, not appointments in 2 special cases)

B> Cause rules for the MCC and HFC elections to match when it comes to issues related to time frames, number of nominees standing, and special case handling.

This also has the effect of the community approving that they also believe that Council (MCC), which worked with Nokia, is in fact the same type of group they want once Nokia is out of the picture.

That seems a bit more than cosmetic. Tried to follow the IRC log of the meeting that resulted in much heated debate (SD69 vs woody vs joerg_rw, now closed thankfully), saying it was confusing is understatement. But if the question is put in this way:

(MCC Rule List*) Shall become (HFC Rule List*), and the Maemo Community Council will from now on be transformed into Hildon Foundation Council. Yes or No?

the transformation part seems added and not worth discussing, while the chat logs make it seem that there is a bit more happening in the background, like Nokia representative having a say if MCC elections would fail (no candidates etc) vs no such thing since it will be now HFC? Is this referendum _only_ changing that single case of 3/5 (easily fixed by having additional member announcing his candidacy in those two cases to avoid problematic number), or was something skipped?

edit: don't want to fuel conspiracy theories, but if we just wanted to fix 3/5 candidates issue, we don't need that 'transforms to XYZ', no? We could keep the name/functions/other rules that apply...

The differences in ruleset for elections are highlighted in http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...les_referendum, as mentioned in post #1.

MCC accepting these and other HiFo rules as applicable to Council transforms the MCC into HFC, with all the rights and liabilities towards HiFo, and same time cutting last links to Nokia on this level.
Since Council can't do this on own power, it needs a referendum so community approves this process.

/j

The changes are slightly more than that...
As noted in the top post, the details of what's changing are on the wiki page. Note how the lower part has words highlighted in bold where changes are slated to occur. That is what you're voting on with this referendum.

"That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet."

The name you call Council can be changed, as like everything, it's community driven. Many here simply call it "Council", when it's full title is "Maemo Community Council". Most care more about the function than the name, and the desire of this change is to allow the function of Council to remain the same.

Technically, to give Council the legal rights to do certain things, it needs to have among it's name(s) "Foundation Council". This referendum (and another patch documented in the ByLaws) helps put things in line so that Council having that additional title make logical sense.

There's no "conspiracy" to change anything, or take anything from the community. In fact, the end goal is to give more power to the community, in part by giving the elected representatives of Council more say in things they traditionally did not have in the past.

Edit: And... Joerg_rw beat me to it...

By an hour... :/

I did check the link that was given, but discussion on IRC seemed more concerned in how to get rid of MCC with its ruleset as it caused some headache. Why not ask the referendum question in two parts then if it changes nothing _except the 3/5 rule_:

1. (MCC Rule List*) Shall become (HFC Rule List*). Yes/No

2. The Maemo Community Council will from now on be known/titled as 'Hildon Foundation Council', without any change to rules governing it (i.e. all previously set rules that would apply to Maemo Community Council will be still valid for the entity with the new name), all previous rights/responsibilities <insert more legalese along these lines as you will>, in essence, people putting this up for vote are changing just the name and by no means invalidate previously set up legal framework for that entity. Yes or No?

Somehow "transforming MCC to HFC" without definition of what transforming means (and also retroactively? Would previously set up things that were about MCC work with "transformed" MCC, or would we hear: this is not MCC, so does not apply?)

SIGH, the rules are virtually identical, but HFC will follow new HFC rules (which are basically a part of the HiFo bylaws) and not the old MCC rules anymore. So your whole point 2 is misleading and not to the point. For a name change Council wouldn't need a referendum.
Identical, except the highlighted parts plus additional stuff formerly simply not existing for MCC (like, for example, HFC and BoD both can call for an election of both entities in sync). Probably due to legal reasons the HiFo bylaw hasn't defined MCC and MCC's rules as HiFo's Council, but defined it anew under the term HFC with slightly changed name and basically identical rules. BoD already accepted MCC as their council in first meeting, so the crux of the matter is MCC becomes HFC now ("transforms into HFC"), while we try our very best to keep the spirit and rules like they always been since invention of MCC, just that we are moving our focus away from Nokia towards HiFo and claim all the new powers the Council has towards HiFo that it never had towards Nokia for obvious reasons. The 5/3 amendment is only a a minor matter we do since we're already at it.
Since one entity can't follow two concurrent rulesets defining this entity (even when they were 100% identical, not only 99.99%), we run this referendum to let our community transform us, the MCC, into the HFC. This gets accomplished by you voting that the suggested new HFC rules shall be the rules the Council will follow from now on.

What I'd want to get checked though is the binding of future HFC rule changes to a referendum, this needs to be kept for HFC rules (and probably for complete HiFo rules of which HFC rules are a subset). Haven't read the HiFo bylaws yet, regarding that.

Anyway I agree that the referendum text should more clearly mention this logical switch from MCC to HFC rules, since that is the essential meaning of this whole action. Likewise the wiki page should get augmented to include in the new version all the parts of HiFo bylaws relevant for council.

/j

Mr. Chairman, I move to close debate and call the question! (not that I am against debate, it is I'm for getting this done and moving forward.)