peterleinchen | # 211 | 2014-12-26, 19:04 | Report

So you are saying your words are not 'best course of action'?
Nah, just kidding, thanks for your input.

We already started this thread to see if we could/should start a referendum about that question. Discussion is going on, and that is to the 'vocal ones'.

So, please leave your opinion here and let us discuss it.
(my take: we should keep council until e.V. is settled and then think again about a referendum)

Estel | # 212 | 2014-12-27, 09:15 | Report

Actually, it was exactly what I was saying There were voices of many "prominent" Community members, but we're all just a tiny fraction of Community, and I think that without actual referendum, we we will never know what Community want. I would say that I hope that this discussions help unsure members to decide, but I know better than hope for non-vocal members to read such threads...

Anyway, in my opinion, most arguments were already laid, with most being even repeated, few times. This would imply good time for actual referendum, but, of course, it's just my opinion and feel free to discus as long as you want (just try to not make it "we will discuss infinitely or until everyone lost interest, so decision will never happen" ).

/Estel

Win7Mac | # 213 | 2014-12-27, 12:45 | Report

Strictly speaking, as it has always been and continues to be in MC eV, a referendum is meant to adjust Council election rules. Nothing more, nothing less. A scenario to easily change electorate (option #3), exclude (option #1) or disband (option #3) Council wasn't really considered when establishing Bylaws and General Regulations.

I still wonder why option #4 isn't mentioned in post 1: Basically keep things as they are (Council being entity of MC eV), and just clearly define/limit Councils' responsibilities in a way that it cannot force board into anything that could affect their legal liability.

Anything that goes beyond adjusting Council election rules needs a mendate from Board (for change of Bylaws) or General Assembly (for change of either Bylaws or General Regulations). In this case the referendum is meant to unveil the Community will and Board or General Assembly is supposed to implement that. To do so, let's wait for the new council to be settled. Maybe we can add a poll to this thread at some point to see in which direction Community is tending to.

joerg_rw | # 214 | 2014-12-27, 14:01 | Report

tl;dr: council cannot "force board into anything". Board/e.V. needs to define in own bylaws that they never will go rogue and do things the community doesn't want them to do. And e.V. has to seek for community approving that the e.V. bylaws efficiently enforce this. Council will help on this approval by running a referendum.



it's completely incredible how people here
1) invent an e.V that by design is set up to obsolete the council, instead of contenting itself with acting as a pretty normal supporting entity doing the legal and "business" coordination and bookkeeping work for the community
2) all the time babble about nonsense like "just clearly define/limit Councils' responsibilities in a way that it cannot force board into anything" while it's obvious to everybody with a brain to think with that an e.V. or board or whatever cannot "get forced" to do anything by an entity outside of the e.V. structures. It would've been duty of the guys that designed the bylaws of such e.V. to define the ways the e.V. is maybe obliged to act in best interest of what council asks for. Until such bylaw paragraphs/rules are defined, no council outside of the e.V. could force the e.V. or parts of it to do *anything*. And there is no "legal requirement" for dunnowhat nonsense limitations of what a e.V. can define they want to accept and obey for own ruleset/agenda.

When I hire a tax adviser, I can not force him to do anything illegal. Nevertheless he must not do anything with my tax declaration or bank account he thinks is funny but I didn't instruct him to do. When maemo community (with their long established proven-to-work representative entity 'council') 'hire' an e.V. to manage all assets for them, such e.V can not get forced to do anything illegal, but same time isn't entitled to do whatever they like with the maemo community assets. So it's council that formulates intentions (based on what the community at large instructs council to try and achieve / implement / facilitate) and it's such asset manager e.V to listen to such intentions and find ways to turn them into lawful action. When the asset manager e.V. bluntly refuses to act in best interest of maemo community and council, there should be ways the council could instruct the e.V to do something about that, and there needs to be a paragraph in e.V.'s bylaws that binds the e.V. to actually obey council's instruction literally in this particular specific case. It's up to the designers of bylaws to find the right methods to handle this case, be it a general assembly that discusses the case and if it can't moderate between council and board will search for help from a lawyer who decides if e.V according to own rules is acting in best interest of maemo community and council doesn't see that, or if council is right and e.V is not acting in best interest of community. Or whatever else the e.V. bylaw designers may come up with to solve the dissent case in a lawful way that doesn't discriminate the maemo community at large. And it's up to the community at large to decide in a referendum if the bylaws of such e.V. are suited for what the community would like to see as their asset manager. The community is well-advised to make sure the bylaws have clear statements about the e.V. being bound to act in community's best interest (as expressed via council which got elected by community and between elections polls community's interests by suitable means), and to also have a close look how this gets enforced in case the e.V. decides to ignore community and council. Particularly community is well-adviced to not have the bylaws of an asset manager e.V redefine what the community actually is (garage membership vs e.V membership), unless the community wants to abolish itself.
(btw it is, or whould have been, HiFo's legal duty to not transfer the role/task of asset manager to any new entity like an e.V. before community agreed on that new entity being OK according to the above listed - as well as other relevant - aspects. And it is, or would have been, council's duty to enforce this. Worst case by triggering a "red button" re-election of HiFo board and council, when board ignores council's request to have e.V. bylaws approved by a referendum. And by resorting to law enforcement means when HiFo ignores even the red-button and nevertheless proceeds to transfer assets to a new entity that not been approved by community yet).

All the time I read arguments like "when e.V. is legal owner of the assets then e.V. may do whatever they like with those assets - that's a legal requirement". This is nonsense! When my tax adviser has full access to my company's bank account, then the bank's legal requirements (rather: contract fineprint - their "bylaws") say he *can* do whatever he likes on that account (since the bank isn't up to checking what the tax advisor does and if that's a correct thing to do) - nevertheless he is not entitled to do whatever he likes on my company's bank account, he needs to act in my best interest and he even may get sued when he doesn't. Still I cannot force him to do anything illegal, that's the nonsense argument boiled in idiocy broth.

introducing such general assembly as an entity to overrule/bypass the (not sufficiently clearly defined) general e.V. purpose of acting as supporter for maemo community and only as such, was the root messup that hardly get fixed now.
It probably been done in a spirit of "council is evil, we want to improve democracy in maemo community" - don't ask me where this weird notion arisen from

anyway, good luck again. I keep myself detached from this madness, I can't cope with it any longer

/j

---

Last edited by joerg_rw; 2014-12-27 at 15:47.

Win7Mac | # 215 | 2014-12-28, 22:47 | Report

...that you made up.
Again, it's not about illegal activity. That is pretty well covered by the law. It's about legal activity that board has to show liable for. Like any business action.

Please read Bylaws § 2 (Purpose of the association).
If you think that's not enough spot on the community, that may be due to the fact that it fullfills requirements for tax-exemption, so it sounds a bit "educationalish".

And I don't even want to know were your spirit of "board is evil, we need to subjugate it" weird notion is arisen from.

joerg_rw | # 216 | 2014-12-29, 00:04 | Report

[emphasis in bold in all 3 quotes by joerg]

What now? Do you maybe make up your mind eventually? It's clearly ONLY about legal responsibility of board for their actions, and that nobody can force them to do anything illegal. Other than that they indeed should FEEL forced/obliged to do exactly what MAEMO COUNCIL tells them to do (again, a 1000th time: if it's not illegal). Since that's exactly the only purpose of such e.V. And it doesn't matter if those in board feel they want to "support" this particular action (aka: they think it's a great idea), since it's Maemo Community to decide, not board, not any general assembly of any e.V., heck not even Maemo council. It's exclusive right of Maemo Community as represented by Maemo Council to decide what to do. It's board's responsibility to check if it's legal to do this. It's NOT board's responsibility to override community's decisions.

The Maemo Community didn't ask for a new better 'government', the one we had (and afaik still have, and which isn't a government actually) just works great (kudos to the recent council btw). And there's no need for any paradox nonsense like abolishing Maemo Council and replacing it by a task force group of elected volunteers (see 1st quote above), since that's already exactly what the existing Maemo Council already IS: an elected group of volunteers, elected by the only legitimate electorate Maemo Community as defined in maemo council's election rules. And it's proven to work, and got established by quite a number of people investing much effort and thinking into designing / defining the way it works.

What maemo community needs is an entity to do the business bookkeeping, noting else, nothing beyond.


Honestly, you shouldn't argue about stuff you have not got sorted on your own yet. OR maybe just write it in (original?) German wording once, so we make sure my poor understanding of English isn't the root cause of a big misunderstanding here. For me you sound pretty much paradox in the above three posts I quoted.

I tell you nevertheless, also to make sure you don't again turn around my statements as if *I* was the one with that notion: No Sir, it's exactly you who pushed in that direction from very beginning, even badmouthing about council in private query to me on IRC, which made me wonder what's wrong with you since at that time I actually been part of this council.

/j

joerg_rw | # 217 | 2014-12-29, 00:43 | Report

The whole thing simply doesn't mention Maemo Community a single time. I don't see how it would be suited to fix the problem I referred to, that a general assembly and even a board is free to ignore Maemo Community completely. The above lnked URL / paragraph nicely lists a set of purposes of the e.V. which would allow to move the whole assets to support Ubuntu Touch or even Android and shut down maemo completely. Which would be all fine (well... " ") if it was decided by Maemo Community in a referendum, but NOT when a general assembly or even a bord of 5(?) can decide on it.
And all hysterical repeating of "a general assembly is a legal requirement" doesn't help you out of that conflict, the only fix would be to have the according rules in bylaws that clearly state that the e.V. will "obey" to The (true) Maemo Community. As elaborated upon in my previous post.

/j

Wikiwide | # 218 | 2014-12-29, 05:08 | Report

Quick reply...

The problem raised here is that General Assembly =!= Maemo Community.

General Assembly is very small (since people are only starting to fill in application forms). The friction between Maemo Community as a whole (members of *.maemo.org) and e.V. as a new body will decrease, with time, as GA will approach, in its membership, the community at *.maemo.org. Until one or two years pass, it does not make any sense to even begin to change anything about the board, or the council; simply because the board will be recently established, and lack reputation-trust amidst wider community.

And even later, the community will not want to _abolish_ the Council; they may wish to merge the Board and the Council, though, if the members of Council and Board are (almost) the same people.

Best wishes.

joerg_rw | # 219 | 2014-12-29, 05:31 | Report

For democratic reasons council terms shouldn't be longer than the recently defined 6 months. And for organizational reasons the board resp the guys with access to the bank account should at least serve for a year or longer.

/j

Win7Mac | # 220 | 2014-12-29, 14:23 | Report

Exactly. And if Council decides to hire a hitman to get rid of you, that'd be illegal. But if Council decides to rent a Datscha for their next meeting or, let's say rent some obscure servers for backup services for 50€/month, that wouldn't be nescessarily illegal, but still Board has to sign responsible for it. Hope you finally get it too.

That's why Council as Communitys' representative is part of the eV and why there is § 7 (5): "The Board of Directors executes the Council's and General Assembly's rulings." If Board should be forced/obliged to do exactly what Council tells them to do, consequently Council needs to be a part of the eV. A Council completely detached from the eV and being able to force Board into anything is not an option AT ALL.

What's needed is a clarification which rulings can be made by Council and which by General Assembly.