juiceme | # 1 | 2014-09-23, 07:10 | Report

I would like to initiate a discussion on the representative roles of the Maemo Council and Maemo e.V.

Background:

On the olden times, when Nokia ruled all things Maemo, the community had the Council as its representative to deal with Nokia, to voice the concerns of the community and ask for changes/updates/whatever.

The division of labour was clear; Nokia owned everything, dictated everything and could not be held responsible for anything. All that community and Council could do was to speak out their mind.

This all changed when Nokia decided to drop Maemo. Few worthy members of the community managed to negotiate with Nokia that the community might be allowed to keep the legacy.
For that to succeed, there has to be a corporate entity that is responsible for the upkeep and administration; it is not possible in the eyes of law anywhere in the world to have a "nameless community of individual people" to be such an entity.

Hence the Hildon Foundation was created; to be the corporate entity to own the Maemo name, own and operate the servers and software to run Maemo infrastructure and govern everything that we had been given by Nokia.

Current state of affairs:

Later it was found out that for many reasons the U.S. based foundation was problematic entity to hold this position, mainly for reasons of operating costs, rigidity of U.S. law concerning foundations and the fact that Maemo infrastructure is based in Germany.
The idea of moving all the responsibility to a Geman based registered association (e.V. = Eingetragener Verein) was born.

Now, a registered association is like a hobby club or association; it is formed by named real individuals a members, it can elect its members to governing positions and be responsible as collective entity of real and immaterial assets.
Hence, the Maemo e.V. can operate as the real owner of Maemo in all senses of a corporate body under the EU laws.

Now the problematic entity is the old Maemo Council; The Council consists of people elected to the office among the community, by community. But the community here defined is not a legal body; the electorate and the councillors are defined as "Maemo users having Maemo account (same as Garage account AFAIK?)"

Now the problem with this is that "people with Maemo Account" is not a group of real people, the only requirement for being in that group is having a valid email address, there is no check of identity, multiple accounts or anything.
Hence this group of users cannot be directly included as members of the Maemo e.V.

Currently the Maemo e.V. is finalizing membership application process, so that all members of Maemo Community who want to participate in the future of Maemo are invited to join in the organization as members.

Possible solutions:

There are few possibilities to address. I would like to hear the opinions of people on the correct course to progress with.

1.) The things continue as they are currently: There is a separate Maemo Council that has no real power or responsibility.
The Maemo Council would be a voice of "The people that are mildly intrested in Maemo but not enough to be members".
In this scenario the Council would behave towards Maemo e.V. like it used to when Nokia was still owner of Maemo.

2.) The Maemo Council election rules are changed so that the electorate is members of Maemo e.V.
The Maemo Council would operate inside Maemo e.V. and have real power and responsibility to act.

3.) The Maemo Council is disbanded as unnecessary element in the current state of affairs.

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Last edited by juiceme; 2014-09-23 at 08:29. Reason: Typo in the heading!

pichlo | # 2 | 2014-09-23, 09:24 | Report

It sounds to me that #3 is the best way forward. It sounded like that to me half way throgh your post, long before I reached the point when options were presented. Unless I misunderstood something of course.

Estel | # 3 | 2014-09-23, 10:22 | Report

I'm also all for 3 - Council is obsolete in current state of affairs, and in fact, may even act as a problem for Community (all too known power disputes).

If necessary, Council could act as volounteer's Community relation team for Board (aka gathering ideas, problems, etc., from various scattered places Community participate in, like TMO, IRC channels, whatever - that Board may not have time to read - and forwarding it to Board), but for that, we don't need people elected by voting.

Anyway, whatever you do, make it clear who have deciding and governing power, and who doesn't. I don't think anyone want to see power disputes, EVER.

/Estel

// Edit

And to be absolutely honest, IMO Council doesn't ring positive bells in Community, even since time looong before Nokia officially dropped support for Maemo. I remember discussions "do we really need Council, it's absent, ineffective, and sad" from even before I've entered this Community, and various creative people would have *much* to say about Council and "respect" it awakes (qwerty's "love letter" comes to mind),

That said even though I was Councilor myself - I don't think Council *ever* did a good job at what it was supposed to be, and thinks only gone from 'bad' to 'terrible' with advent of Council<->Board power disputes. For sure, I won't miss Council.

/Estel

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Last edited by Estel; 2014-09-23 at 10:27.

wicket | # 4 | 2014-09-23, 15:49 | Report

Could we have clarity on what option 3 entails? How will Maemo e.V. interface with the community? Would Maemo e.V. assume the roles and responsibilities that the council currently has?

I'm also somewhat concerned that e.V. members != community, and what effect that will have. Right now anyone can be a member of the community and has a free voice without having to sign up for anything (unless they want to vote). It's not very clear to me whether this will be the same.

woody14619 | # 5 | 2014-09-23, 16:46 | Report

My choice would be option 1, at least initially. Council stays the same, e.V. electorate is separate and consists of real people willing to give their info to the proper authority to become a legitimate member of the group.

In the end, if Council is really not needed, it will effectively terminate itself. Either by having the same members in it's body as the e.V., or simply from lack of people running for it.

I think any of the options is somewhat doable, but option 2 is harder to pull off. I'd frankly advise against that.

There is, of course, a 4th option: Turn off the lights and move on. But I don't think everyone is quite ready for that yet.

joerg_rw | # 6 | 2014-09-23, 17:35 | Report

What follows is a description of the past that has quite some incorrect points in it, thus transporting a distorted idea of what things were like, what happend, and how situation is now.
Let me comment on the points I think need clarification, and mention my concerns towards the end of this post.
The council's tasks/responsibilities were broader than just that.
Nokia only owned Nokia proprietary stuff. Most of maemo is FOSS
I didn't see Nokia dictating stuff.
Of course they could be held responsible for e.g. mp3 or other royalty/patent-encumbered software getting published on maemo repos, for any illegal posts or links on planet.m.o and probably even on talk.m.o though that actually never been owned by Nokia.
Please read http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council#Council_work
Actually all this changed when Nokia tranferred maemo management and responsibility to community and council, which been long before invention of HiFo and even before Nokia mentioned publicly that they gonna abandon maemo.
As I remember it, it been Nokia who asked for community offering an entity that Nokia could transfer maemo legal ownership to. It actually been Nokia who was interested in transferring maemo to community completely (partially it been done almost years before, as mentioned above), not "Few worthy members of the community managed to negotiate with Nokia"
so far correct
Operation of the servers been in councl's responsibility already since ages, guess why http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council#Council_work says "[Council has the responsibility/power for] Hiring of maemo.org staff" (which were the guys of Nemein and other community members doing professional work on server administartion and maintenance in cooperation with Council, _not_ Nokia employees)
there's no software formerly owned by Nokia that gets/got transferred to HiFo or anybody else and is used to run maemo.org (except of a few shell scripts which don't have any copyright in them and are made by nemein and supposed to be public domain)
[edit] see "svn checkout https://vcs.maemo.org/svn/maemo2midgard" - and the few scripts actually been already redone by new maemo techstaff and volunteers, since they introduced memleaks, so when anybody owns (C) in them then that's the community, not Nokia. Also see http://wstaw.org/m/2014/09/24/plasma-desktopvP1979.png on every maemo.org page. Some (ex) in HiFo don't get tired of claiming they inherited (or will inherit) more than just the hw, rights in 'maemo'[TradeMark] and maemo.org (the URL/DNS/domain) from Nokia by signing any NDA'ed contracts, however they regularly fail to quote what exactly this "Software owned by Nokia" might be, they can't name any. So any such claims have to be assumed as incorrect, probably propagated by Nokia to HiFo who taken them without actually checking.
Nokia didn't think of any governance this entity shall do to maemo community. Actually nobody governs the maemo community, it's self-governed and council is the administrative entity appointed to organize this self governance.
Well, the operating costs seem to be not much different to anywhere else on this world
which probably is exactly the reason why HiFo cannot legally transfer funds and assets to an entity that isn't adhering to the same bylaws (at least to the effect, if not to the word)
That's a minor convenience thing, basically only relevant for money transfers and the fees banks charge for them.
Basically mainly because a German e.V. has not the rigid laws you mentioned above, so friction on that entity's self-organization been considered possibly lower for an e.V than for a US chapter 504(?)xy company, and because American banks suck.
yes, it can. Exactly like HiFo did.
Hardly, see next few comments
So what? It doesn't need to be.
Exactly, and that's the way whole community and even Nokia agreed upon, voted on it in three referenda, and had a paragraph in the defining rules that those rules themselves cannot get altered except by a referendum of electorate as defined in those rules.
Why should it, despite it actually _is_ _exactly_ "a group of real people". It's not a legal person or entity but: see above and below.
Well, that's exactly how community and Nokia agreed upon and decided it to be like that. In a sense of welcoming everybody who's interested in participation. However note that for any position in maemo orga it's usually been required that the real identity gets disclosed and checked, since council of course is liable for doing mess to the server they are maintaining (and did since Nokia transferred maemo to community, something that happened long ago already, as mentioned above). Actually you could think of council as the IT-manager of a company (HiFo) that owns the whole thing. While legally the boss (HiFo) may do all and is in command over the employees, it's the employees that are supposed to do the work and suggest reasonable actions to higher level authorities (the boss). In a sane company the boss is usally supposed to follow any such suggestions, unless the boss knows stuff the employees are not aware of or missed out on considering.
Maemo techstaff is the sysops and workers, IT-manager (council) is their direct boss, usually they don't even ever meet the owner of the company (HiFo)
Oh, and on a sidenote, even company CEO (the owner/HiFo) can get legally sued when they do utterly bad management that does harm to the complete company, at least when the company actually is a holding and real owners is a huge group of people holding shares in that company.
Who defined including whole maemo garage electorate as being mandatory? It not been like this with HiFo, why would it be needed for e.V. ? Hifo agreed with council on this "company model" as of last section, and accepted that usually it's council that suggests what to do and HiFo has no power over council and community and usually is supposed to execute what THE COMMUNITY (represented by council) asks for (unless illegal). Why does any e.V need to abolish that and instead have an unelected group of privileged members called GA, appointed (or rejected!!!) by some unelected self-appointed entity inside the e.V. which are deciding instead of THE MAEMO COMMUNITY? I don't see why any e.V cannot act exactly like the HiFo concept we publicly discussed and agreed upon. You need a GA? fine! have a 6 members that are authorized by elections forming that GA, and make them promise to always listen to THE MAEMO COMMUNITY and not start own activity abusing their privileged position. after all they are supposed to be members of the community and not elected to be the (lifetime) emperors of (the huge discriminated rest of) community.[edited formatting due to obviously it's not recognized as constructive suggestion how to put the whole thing onto rails again]
This is where discrimination and abolishing/killing of the original maemo community starts

This would only be true when e.V would disregard/deny any existing established responsibilities of council, as been agreed upon first with Nokia and then with (the initial) HiFo.

Originally Posted by juiceme View Post

The Maemo Council would be a voice of "The people that are mildly intrested in Maemo but not enough to be members".

Damage/killing of maemo community continued...

Originally Posted by juiceme View Post

In this scenario the Council would behave towards Maemo e.V. like it used to when Nokia was still owner of Maemo.

actually not, see above. This conception of the relationship between council, Nokia and techstaff is incorrect and flawed

Originally Posted by juiceme View Post

2.) The Maemo Council election rules are changed so that the electorate is members of Maemo e.V.
The Maemo Council would operate inside Maemo e.V. and have real power and responsibility to act.

Damage/killing of maemo community continued... This time even by redefining the council.

Originally Posted by juiceme View Post

3.) The Maemo Council is disbanded as unnecessary element in the current state of affairs.

indeed it is, when you want to turn a FOSS community of (depending on the way you count) ~6000 to ~100,000 members into a "community" of a few dozen appointed by a governing entity (=board **) ), paying membership fees, not concerned about their anonymity, possibly European *) members of a club. All the existing (council) rules and (HiFo) bylaws don't allow this, however win7mac frankly confessed that's his plan now: "That never was the plan, but it turns out partially that's a requirement for an eV indeed". (which is an unbacked requirement made up by him to drive this "improvemet of democracy")
*) [edit] emphasized since otherwise it seems it will get answered by a "we don't see those problems, we welcome everybody in GA", or by making up some allegedly existing German laws.
**) "Board which is 3 people (currently Chair and 2 Vice) accepting applications" (or rejecting, no matter of any "why should we do this")

Because of my concerns regarding all this, I decided to clearly state that I disagree on the whole idea of transforming community into a club, and due to legal concerns of this thing getting forwarded nevertheless while people rise a shitstorm against me for pointing at the problems, I will not contribute and participate any further. What happens from now on is not in my responsibility any more, it's up to the rest of actors to cope with the possible consequences from death of maemo community to legal lawsuits that anybody might start against HiFo (of which council is a sub-entity as well. and thus shares responisbility for any actions HiFo takes)

BR
Bye maemo
jOERG
(a last time with councilor signature, though as a sort of minority report since other council members like to disagree on most of my concerns)
PS: I also won't answer any comments on this post. No matter if they are the ususal polemic flaming with severe ADHS or any unusual reasonable contribution. My particular thanks to wicket for summing up all the concerns I share, in a concise manner.
PPS: in following post http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1440274 literally every single word except "exactly" and maybe (dunno what he can find) ""I cant find one single statement in above" is incorrect and conceived as bashing on my side. That's why I had to leave. That and the "personal culpability for intentionally doing things harmful" which Woody thankfully confirmed actually exists and which I am not willing to take anymore (being part of the gang and not acting against some acton means participating in said action), and which Niel mentioned as his reason for leaving as well after I explained the issue in a mail to council..

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Last edited by joerg_rw; 2014-09-24 at 15:53.

nieldk | # 7 | 2014-09-23, 18:40 | Report

Joerg, You have most members deep respect. The number of thanks on your posts, the fact that you were asked to join council is just a few points that proof this.

But, that being said. I dont see you giving any feedback on how this can move on. In fact, your argumentation is more or less "its illegal", "thats wrong" or "you are wrong" and "iam being bullied".

This is not to say you are wrong. You have many valid and correct statements. But wouldnt it be better to come up with solutions to consider, rather than just negating initiatives from other people.?

Too much energy is wasted on this, and it have started to take too much effort to even read througj the mails and postings here - which gradualky is turning into flaming.

i do not want to spent anymore time on this flaming, it brings a certain death to this community, and it takes too much time away from personal life.

Joerg, you left because your ideal may not be met, I understand that, and actually can appreciate it.

With this, I also retire my activity here. I hope that the remaining members can then move on, without Joerg and I.

I wont promise I will return, I may. But I feel like this community probably will not exist if/when.

I feel deeply humiliated to take this decision, since some good members took their time to actually vote. But, many of you have a deep knowledge on how this might affect my already vulnerable family life, so I trust you understand and accept this decision.

BR
Niel

juiceme | # 8 | 2014-09-23, 19:19 | Report

Joerg, thank you for correcting the parts of my post that are wrong, it is true I was not here when most of the things that I described happened.

However, the concerns I am raising are real. And we do need to work on these points to have a working community that operates smoothly, without conflicts between the people taking care of running it.

You raised many times a concern of this leading to something you perceive as a privileged group (the GA, General Assembly) when in fact that is all but closed/privileged, We are welcoming everybody into participating this as members of GA.

Dave999 | # 9 | 2014-09-23, 21:14 | Report

I vote for number one right now but basically... until the current council in an understandable way explain to me if they feel they have a useful position, and if not explain that they are not needed and could resign in 3 month time. After that I might be able to make a decision regarding option 1,2,3 or 4.

Edit: Joerg. Your post is indeed so very very long.

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Last edited by Dave999; 2014-09-23 at 22:12.

Win7Mac | # 10 | 2014-09-23, 23:02 | Report

Again: Nobody.

That doesn't change really. Again, please read bylaws §7 (5):
It's more like (GA next to Council > Board)

It does not. See above

Again, it's not instead, but next to it.
Anyway, those brave souls that are willing to share some time for community work indeed have the privilage to become a regular member, just like any other community fella as well, everybody is welcome!

Wrong again, of course board gets elected, in a 1-year cycle just like with HiFo. Besides that, GA or Council can call for reelections or a meeting where things can be decided upon ANY TIME.

YOU know better, YOU voted on them... wrong as can be!

NO, you got it ALL WRONG!

Because...
Bingo!

How exactly "have" those 6? Why 6?
No matter how you turn it, you CAN NOT get voted in as regular member, that has to be done upon own choice/request BY LAW. And the founders HAVE TO remain members until they quit or they get discarded for turning against MC eVs' statutes, aims or bylaws, by law.
BTW, membership generally MUST be granted to everybody unless there are severe concerns, otherwise board would act unlawfully by discrimination.

That will happen self-regulatory hopefully. Anybody turning against MC eVs' statutes, aims or bylaws gets discarded upon either Boards' or GAs' decision. At least that's what they're able to.

What an immense load of nonsense in such a few words... Again, READ ABOVE to realize board gets elected year after year by the pack that cares enough about community and that is willing to commit officially and to probably spend a buck a year.

No, this is what the law sets. Beyond that, actually working on this **** is, while bawling about it when it's too late isn't?

That never was the plan, but it turns out partially that's a requirement for an eV indeed. KDE for example managed to do so at least, in a similar way.

Leaving it up to the readers interpretation if that's a resignation or just another smoke grenade is embarrassing. Not worth a councilor IMHO,