freemangordon | # 151 | 2014-10-03, 04:14 | Report

Yes, it doesn't worth it. I'll refrain from further comments here (and focus on REing/coding), as it seems my posts only contribute to the mess. Without helping much.

Estel | # 152 | 2014-10-03, 04:48 | Report

Well, Community could say "no" in the referendum or vote something idiotic by 2/3 majority of votes in General Assembly, which Board would be obliged to commit or step down. Then, it would probably end up with "winding down", as no one would like to take legal responsibility for organization working wrong way (if community would deny organizational changes in referendum), or to do something illegal (if such thing would be enforced on Board by 2/3 votes).

In such case, either new Board is elected and performs what Community decided - taking legal risk, that former Board wasn't willing to take - or, if Community demands something, but don't have people willing to do it (no candidates), organization would just get disbanded.

Summing it up - Board is not a bunch of "overlords". General Assembly is (aka, users from Community that are actively interested in deciding future of Maemo), and it just delegates representing them to Board. General Assembly can, always, change things by majority of votes (or choosing different Board).

/Estel

joerg_rw | # 153 | 2014-10-03, 10:18 | Report

Incorrect. I offered to forward money to an entity providing a service (managed host [aka "with sysop"] incl local backup [aka tape archive]) to maemo, and that entity had an NDA agreement with techstaff much the same like HiFo claims the contract with Nokia is under NDA so it cannot get disclosed to council. I offered to forward the money and I explicitly refused to be part of any contract, actaully after further requirements from HiFo side were brought up, I completely rejected any involvement beyond forwarding of one payment once a year. I explained to HiFo that the service-contract with that entity will end when nobody is willing to pay the fee (which is a thing so normal that I dunno why it needed explanation to HiFo at all), and that the service will cease in that case (similar basic real life logic).
I been willing to sign a receipt but not write an invoice since I'm not providing any service so couldn't invoice for such service (initially I offered to invoice, but HiFo "convinced me" that I don't want to do anything like that).
At no point in time I did "serve backup-services to the maemo infra" or "asked for money to be paid to [me]". And definitely there been no contract between me and HiFo (or maemo at large) regarding all that.
any further arguing about this will get ignored since it seems to argue with you about meaning of words needs stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semant...Business_Rules or it will end in a mess every single time.

[ps: as usual I'm willing to disclose internal communication between me and HiFo about all that, to prove my point, when forced to do so]

---

Last edited by joerg_rw; 2014-10-03 at 12:44.

joerg_rw | # 154 | 2014-10-03, 10:30 | Report

just too good, so I couldn't help but bite the bait.

s/GA/maemo community/ in above (since, AIUI GA is meant to be "the new community since we don't like and can't use the old real Maemo Community as defined by garage account), and I can't see where stuff differs from what I said all the time: council is community's proxy and thus the board is (logically, I DISagree on legally) supposed to do what council asks for. I think it would be pretty silly of a board to do something illegal just because council or whoever asks for it. It's board's duty to check if a request is legal, and to reject doing it when it's considered illegal. Usually board explans what's the problem, and when the requesting entity disagrees and insists nevertheless, then yes, the board may offer to step down. Nobody can force board to do something illegal, that's nonsense. When MCeV BoD is afraid that council could ask them to do something illegal, then what about GA?? Wouldn't it be all the more a reason to have only a limited small number of carefully selected regular members forming the GA? After all (HiFo, at least) BoD is supposed to be able to discard council (by "the big red button" aka re-election of both entities) when council goes too mad, while I don't see any such security fallback mechanism for GA.

---

Last edited by joerg_rw; 2014-10-03 at 13:20.

joerg_rw | # 155 | 2014-10-03, 12:53 | Report

Joerg (to "all"):
Direct Answer:


I probably had a 500 reasons to step down for all the threatening/insults/damage done by people accusing me for stuff I never did

---

Last edited by joerg_rw; 2014-10-03 at 13:31.

benny1967 | # 156 | 2014-10-03, 13:39 | Report

So the council is superfluous as it only passes on the intentions of the community to the board without taking responsibility.

Sorry if I chime in here; I tried not to because I don't see anything good coming from this discussion. OTOH, I am a lawyer (it's not my daytime job, but I studied law and at least worked at courts once) and maybe that influences how I see things.

May view is that:

• Either the e.V. is the new community (or wants to be), so the assumption is that GA=community, board has all the legal duties. In this case, a council would have no function at all. (It could still exist if people need it for their egos. It won't play any role though.)
• Or the e.V. is a group of people who define themselves as working for the community. In this case, the GA would be a (small) subset of the community or could even consist of people who are not part of the community. In this scenario, the council isn't really needed either, but could have a role as it had before: channeling communication between the e.V. and the community (=garage accounts).

In both cases, the e.V. holds all the legal responsibility (as "the community" as such doesn't legally exist) and the members of the board are responsible for everything that happens. There is no way that a council that operates beside the board could have any "power" or could make the board do things. A council can provide advice at most. It could also do work that is not legally required to be done by board members - although people performing such tasks maybe don't need a named entity for it.

The key word is "work". Reading this thread I'm under the impression that people are fighting over power. I've been in enough boards of my country's "e.V."-equivalent and I never felt I had power. I had work to do, and it wasn't fun. As the community probably won't grow much over the years, it might be a wise decision to limit the amount of pre-defined roles to the absolute minimum required by law.

joerg_rw | # 157 | 2014-10-03, 14:00 | Report

The one zillionth time:
council has no LEGAL power! Never had, never been meant to have.
Nevertheless council is the proxy of community, has a lot more of duties than just talking to the owner of the assets aka BoD, thus is needed anyway, and is supposed to be the entity that tells BoD what's the consense of intention in community, for BoD to evaluate if it's all legal and then BoD deciding if that request can get fulfilled or not. What council tells BoD is NOT LEGALLY BINDING but nevertheless agreed upon between all who are involved to be a strong suggestion, since council is the one to fulfil that duty of offloading stuff like elections, facilitating, communication, polls, suggestions, publishing whitepapers etc pp from HiFo/whatever, since that BoD is supposed to, and actually already (see HiFo meeting minutes) explicitly opted for not getting bothered with all that(or were never in charge of doing it), since they are busy with all that legal and finances stuff and don't even want to learn how to administrate a server or how to conduct an election or what packages got to get which state in repos. All those tasks are either already, since 4+ years, managed by council directly or got delegated from council to e.g. techstaff sysops and maintainers, after HiFo BoD officially delegated their duties regarding that to council(see above, HiFo meeting minutes). When you have something you're legally liable for then you either can do the associated tasks ( = work) all on your own or you delegate. HiFo did the second. I don't think the first can ever work (given that GA would also be delegates of BoD) - how would a BoD of three accomplish all the duties that come with ownership of HiFo? I'd be happy if they did, but that won't fly. And if they want to delegate, then why not keep stuff the way it is, it's working (as you can see). It's NOT been HiFo board that fixed all the broken stuff in servers, it's not BoD that found and coordinated those who did, and it's not been BoD that managed any election or referendum. I'm starting to feel tired....

---

Last edited by joerg_rw; 2014-10-03 at 17:19.

Win7Mac | # 158 | 2014-10-03, 15:39 | Report

The 3 board members signing at court. The 4-eyes-principle was put in Bylaws § 7:
(3) The Board of Directors shall designate a chair and two Deputy Directors. Any two of these three Board members together are authorized to fully represent the association.

There's a dedicated thread for that over here, where I answered your questions.

2/3 majority of GA.
To change bylaws, 2/3 majority of GA or unanimous decision by BoD is required. Change of bylaws have to be filed to court and will be in effect only after their acknowledgement.

Just an example of joerg THREATENING those that dare to express contradictional views:
IMHO the above threat itself as well as joergs' stance on how to deal with the situation (let alone the vocabulary or the methods of constant ignorance, defamation, misinterpretation and desinformation used) is intolerable and must have consequences. Conveniently, Council has the perfect right to discard council members upon own decision. I just hope they make good use of this possibility in order to finally allow for community to progress.

---

Last edited by Win7Mac; 2014-10-05 at 14:41.

joerg_rw | # 159 | 2014-10-03, 15:48 | Report

Incorrect: just a promise what I will do when you continue spreading lies about me that are clearly damaging my reputatipon and also clearly and easily proven to be blatant lies. Try to treat anybody else like you are doing with me, the echo will be similar but 10 times faster and harder.
A little really complicated logic problem for you to solve: how would my lawyers make money from YOU when YOU didn't do anything wrong - affecting me?

btw: even when your claim was correct (it isn't), how's "THREATENING those that dare to express contradictional views" (I never did that) any relevant for my statement "Me pointing at the real danger of anybody starting lawsuits against HiFo and/or MCeV is NO THREATENING!"? Still seems a absolutely correct and valid statement, just missing the background that somebody accused me of doing exactly this, on post before. Shows how you react on single buzzwords like a well trained Pavlov dog. You're in best company
And thanks, I feel flattered that you think I need to get out of the way "to finally allow for community to progress". I don't see how I could stop *anything* of all that mess you're doing. Except by convincing some community members that not yet gave up that council is their best ambassador they ever had, and they shouldn't vote for a possible dictatorship instead.
And you got informed by some of my co-councilors that they don't think there's any reason or legal way to make me leave council. Why do you insist in suggesting the opposite when you know you're wrong? Eliminating the opposition? We see same hapening in some eastern states recently.

---

Last edited by joerg_rw; 2014-10-03 at 17:57.

pichlo | # 160 | 2014-10-03, 18:16 | Report

That, AIUI, is the point and topic of this thread: does the community need a proxy? And if we do, who will proxy the proxy, possibly ad infinitum?

It was quite clear in the Nokia days. Nokia and "the community" were very different entities, with very different, perhaps even conflicting interests. Some kind of proxy was clearly needed. But how about now?

The way I see it, the proponents of "the council must stay" tend to see MCeV as a third party, the same way as Nokia used to be. In their view, the eV replaced Nokia.

On the other hand, the opponents see the eV as the representative of the community. In that view, the eV effectively replaced the old council, becoming a "council with real power and responsibility" if you like.