Hello Community,
The main part of this post is simplified to a few sentences. If you want
more details, you can read the "Footnotes" section below. (For the sake of
formatting on this mailing list, all the URLs in this post have been
manually stripped and put at the bottom, in the "URLs" section.)
As many of you are aware, the Hildon Foundation Board of Directors has
come to be filled with all unelected Directors. [1]
There has been some significant desire to have a reelection take place
once the infrastructure migration issues were settled. [2]
Those infrastructure issues are now essentially settled - we are running
on our own servers (not the interim Nemein hosting), and our volunteer
techstaff maintains essentially all of *maemo.org. [3]
The Hildon Foundation Council has the authority to call for the elections
of both the Council and the Board of Directors, if there is unanimous
agreement by all members on the Council. [4]
It is the position of this Council, that this Council was always intended
to count as the Hildon Foundation Council. And thus we have the authority
to trigger both elections simultaneously. [5]
Furthermore, even besides this point, a careful consideration of the
Bylaws and the timings of the resignations and appointments of Directors
from the Board, indicates that an election should have already been
triggered by the Bylaws themselves. [6]
Having taken all of the above into consideration, we find that the desires
and wellbeing of the Community is best served by us calling for the
election of both the Council and the Board [7]. We have waited until the
last possible moment in our term to call for this election of both bodies,
to give the Board a chance to get everything done within a reasonable
timeframe and then call for an election in accordance to the intended
democratic spirit of our Hildon Foundation on their own.
Thus, we hereby announce the elections for both the Hildon Foundation
Board and the Council.
Election nominations are now open! Please send nominations to the mailing
list [email protected] . Do not be afraid to nominate yourself or
those you think are suitable for the positions. The last time we barely
scraped together enough candidates for both Council and Board.
Voting timetable:
2013-03-22:
Referendum was Announced [URL 1]
2013-04-09:
Nomination Period for Board/Council Begins
2013-04-22:
Referendum Contemplation Period Ends
Referendum Voting Begins
2013-04-23:
Nomination Period for Board/Council Ends
Board/Council Candidate Contemplation Period Begins
2013-04-29:
Referendum Voting Ends
2013-04-30:
Board/Council Candidate Contemplation Period Ends
Board/Council Election Voting Begins
2013-05-07:
Board/Council Election Voting Ends
- Elections Eligibility Criteria -
Eligibility criteria will likely remain the same as they have been [URL
2], in as much as feasible. There is, however, a modifying circumstance:
*.maemo.org account registration and login has been broken for months,
until recently; furthermore, karma is /still/ broken, with a significant
number of members missing a significant amouht of karma.
We will manually calculate karma for candidates, so the restrictions on
candidates are the same as they have been. However, we think it is
infeasible to manually count the karma for every user who might be
eligible to vote. So unless there is a serious volunteer effort to
calculate everyone's karma by hand, we will treat all maemo.org accounts
older than 3 months as eligible for this election only (if it comes to
pass that karma is still broken by the next election cycle, it will be up
to that Board/Council, and the Community then, to sort out what to do.)
If people with newer accounts think they ought to be eligible to vote (for
example, you would have registered earlier but it was impossible to do so
at the time because the system was broken), please contact the Council by
either responding to this message or, preferably, by emailing
[email protected]. (Please note, while we will try to process requests for
eligibility inclusions as late as possible, we can only realistically
guarantee that we'll manage to do it if you get it in a week before the
vote for the referendum takes place - so before the 15th of this month.)
- Footnotes -
[1] All three of the original Directors left over time. Texrat/Randall had
to depart early on, and Rob (originally in the non-director position of
legal adviser) was appointed to replace him. Ivgalvez/Ivan had to leave
because he had to relocate himself and his family from one country to
another. Tim left shortly after Ivan due to reasons that would take longer
to explain than appropriate for this footnote, but which can be found here
[URL 3]. Woody and Jim were appointed to replace Ivan and Tim respectively.
[2] Thread [URL 4] where Council solicited Community opinion on the matter
of Board re-election. Also here [URL 5], where both Jim and Woody (two of
the current three Board members) indicate support for reelection. Also, a
few of the Community members who come to the Council meetings on IRC have
indicated a desire to see a re-election happen for several meetings now.
[3] We still do not have a final contract signed with Nokia, but that
should not in itself be hindered by a reelection, because the next Board
can sign the contract just as easily, and we are starting to suspect
they'll get it done faster.
[4] §X ¶2 (¶3 if you count the separated-by-pagebreak paragraph as two) of
the Hildon foundation bylaws. (The Board can also trigger an election of
both bodies, but that's beside the point.)
[5] There was some disagreement (from one current Board member that we
know of) whether this Council officially counts as the Hildon Foundation
that the Bylaws refer to previous Council. The alternative would be that
the election for electing a Council and the first Hildon Foundation Board
members at the same time did not mean for the Council to be the Hildon
Foundation Council. This, to be frank, is clearly not what any member of
the Community would expect, since the Council was written in to the Hildon
Foundation Bylaws as a way to formally include the already existing
Council for communication with Nokia into the new, Nokia-independent
framework. Nor is it what was intended by the person mainly responsible
for writing the bylaws (Woody, who is currently another member of the
Board). Finally, if the Hildon Foundation Council is not the current Maemo
Community Council, then A. the Board has failed to appoint or call for the
elections of a Hildon Foundation Council for 6 months, and B. this makes
no logical sense because the election criteria for the Hildon Foundation
are determined by the Hildon Foundation Council according to the bylaws.
So if a Council wasn't intended to be initiated at the same time as Hildon
Foundation Board was, how is Hildon Foundation supposed to execute an
election of either the next Board or a Council, if there is no Council to
set the election eligibility criteria?
[6] We only ever had 3 Directors. The bylaws state that the Board can
spend at most seven days in a row with less than 3 directors, else an
election has to happen. §IV ¶6 (¶7 if you count the paragraph split into
two pages two paragraphs) of the Hildon Foundation bylaws. This has
occured. This [URL 6] post counts the dates and times of official
(in-writing) resignations and acceptance-of-assignment statements of
Directors. Other earlier posts, for example by joerg, in the same thread,
indicate that the same gap of more than 7 days applies to the informal
resignation and acceptance statements.
[7] A more verbose/formal announcement can be seen here [URL 7], in the
latest Council meeting.
- URLs -
[1] http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council/council_rules_referendum
[2] http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council/Election_process
[3] http://www.mwkn.net/2013/10/front.html
[4] http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=89387
[5] http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=89438
[6] http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1329067&postcount=34
[7]
http://mg.pov.lt/maemo-meeting-irclog/%23maemo-meeting.2013-04-05.log.html#t2013-04-05T22:53:09
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