The maemo.org community council got together during the MeeGo conference in San Francisco and discussed several topics related to maemo.org. Two of these topics are of widespread current interest to the community.

The new maemo.org community council has been installed...

sudo apt-get install  council-2011.1 

...and we've spent some time discussing what we want to prioritize and accomplish this term.

Now that Nokia has put Maemo into "maintenance mode", with no promises of future updates, we would like to see Maemo continue forward as a community project. And we believe there are two projects that are very promising for the future of Maemo as a community-supported project.

1. The Community Seamless Software Update (CSSU)

The PR 1.3 release of Maemo was the the last official release from Nokia. But many developers in the community felt we could keep moving forward, fixing bugs and introducing new functionality. "It aims to deliver fixes which would be difficult to deliver through Extras (like core Maemo packages). It won't, however, bundle software which can be installed through the Extras repositories."

The council wants to see all Maemo devices supported in the future. That's why we're also encouraging the CSSU for older "Diablo" devices such as the N800 and N810, as well. 

The council believes these Maemo OS update projects are the best way to keep Maemo fresh and vital, long after they have stopped receiving official support.

2. The Cordia project

The aim of the Cordia project is to get the Maemo 5 UI running on the MeeGo infrastructure. This is important because the Maemo infrastructure has been frozen, and it is ageing gracefully into obsolescence.  The MeeGo infrastructure, on the other hand, is using current versions of all the components, and, because it is supported by several large sponsors, it will probably stay current for the next while. The Cordia project gives us hope that the Maemo UI will survive on a new, maintained system.

Coding Competition

The council would also like to draw your attention to the community-run coding competition. There are prizes and some associated events; see the wiki page for more information.

Other Issues

There are three other issues we should mention:

First, the previous council did some more research and digging, and it is now certain that there will be no official Adobe Flash updates for Maemo. The main problem, as we thought, is performance. Adobe has not optimized / hardware accelerated the Flash player enough, and the N900 just isn't powerful enough to run it without acceleration.

Secondly, despite some enquiries to Nokia by the previous council, there has been no movement from Nokia on the closed components discussed in the wiki.

Finally, we are also discussing possibilities for continuation of the maemo.org community if Nokia were to stop supporting us. It looks like there's not much to worry about in 2011, and it has been made clear to us that even if things change in 2012, we'll have 6 months to react, but we're thinking ahead anyway. We'll try to take this discussion public in the near future.

Hello everyone,

We are going to be holding a public meeting on Saturday, 26 March, at 1400 UTC. This meeting is intended to allow the community to meet and greet the new Council and take part in a discussion in which the old Council hands-over the reigns, etc.

Time:
http://www.worldtimeserver.com/convert_time_in_UTC.aspx?y=2011&mo=3&d=26&h=14&mn=0

Place:
irc.freenode.net/maemo-meeting

Agenda:
1. Introductions
2. What was done during last term
3. What was not done during last term
4. Past Council reflections/comments
5. New Council comments/questions

This meeting should take no longer than an hour.

Thank you... I hope to see a lot of the community there!

Tim

Copied from:
http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2011-March/004739.html

After several days of allowing people to offer their opinions about whether or not to hold an election for the five Maemo Community Council candidates, it has become very clear that almost everyone in our community who is engaged in this process will accept the "no election" scenario and grant the candidates full Council-ship.

This being said, it brings me great pleasure -- and pride -- to announce the new, Q1 2011 Maemo Community Council:

• RM Bauer (SD69)
• Alan Bruce (qole)
• Felipe Crochik (fcrochik)
• Attila Csipa (achipa)
• Randall Arnold (texrat)

As stated plenty of times in the past, these five maemo.org contributors have put in timeless hours supporting our community, Maemo, MeeGo, and Nokia. They are all people who our community has expressed much support for and who will do what it takes to see to it that this community remains vibrant and active.

In speaking for the entire previous Council, of which I was the standing Chair, I'd like to offer a warm welcome (and welcome back to a few of these folks) and wish them a happy and productive term!

Remember, the position of Community Council member is completely voluntary and unpaid. These fine people are serving you, the Maemo Community, in their free time, out of the goodness of their hearts and a passion for what Maemo is and means. Please join me in my welcoming and remember to use the Council as much as you can -- their job is to listen to the community (via talk.maemo.org, the Community Development mailing list, council@maemo.org, planet.maemo.org, etc.) and attempt to coordinate community efforts and communicate the important stuff to Nokia.

Once again, thank you all for the ongoing support. This Council only exists because of you.

As of 23:59 UTC last night, we had a total of five people either nominate themselves, or accept nominations for themselves, as candidates for election for the next term of the Maemo Community Council.

This is an unprecedented event and a conversation about what to do is currently under-way on the Maemo Community Development mailing list. So far, the consensus is that we should not hold an election and just appoint these five candidates (all whom are excellent, long-standing community members) as the next Council. But, before making a final decision, it is clear that the rest of the community should have a say as well.

Here is the list of the five candidates:

• RM Bauer (SD69)
  Nomination Declaration: http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2011-March/004701.html
• Alan Bruce (qole)
  Nomination Declaration: http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2011-March/004712.html
• Felipe Crochik (fcrochik)
  Nomination Declaration: http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2011-March/004715.html
• Attila Csipa (achipa)
  Nomination Declaration: http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2011-March/004723.html
• Randall Arnold (texrat)
  Nomination Declaration: http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2011-March/004717.html

You should recognize some of these names because they were former Council members. Moreover, these are the names of people who have been pillars of maemo.org and of the Maemo Community in general.

To clarify the rules for electing the Community Councils, please refer to the documented Election Process. Since we don't have fewer than five candidates, we are faced with a decision of what to do next. Each of these five people have proven their worth to our community. It is because of this that the current Council (as well as many community members) endorses their election without a vote. If there is good reason to continue to hold the election, please speak up on the mailing list, or comment below.

According to the election timetable, there are only two days left (until 23:59 UTC on 14 March) to add your nomination to the mix for the next term of the Maemo Community Council. To nominate yourself (or someone else), please send a declaration email to maemo-community@maemo.org.

This community needs you. Don't wait until it's too late to get involved in this amazing experience!

Please see this page for more info:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council/Council_election_Q1_2011

Post your nominations on the Maemo Community Development mailing list via maemo-community@maemo.org.

The current Council looks forward to hearing from you!

We're still working on getting a published list of eligible candidates together for the next Maemo Community Council election nominations. In the meantime, if you have 100 Karma points or above, you are eligible. This being said, please seriously consider declaring yourself as a nominee for the upcoming election.

Nomination declarationss (usually self-nominations, although if you get approval from a candidate beforehand you may nominate someone other than yourself) should be sent to the Maemo Community Development mailing list at maemo-community@maemo.org. If you'd like a look at last session's nomination declarations, you can see them here:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council/Candidate_declarations_for_March_2010

Again, this is an important role within our community and one of the simplest ways to dive in a support Maemo and maemo.org.

Time sort of swept right by us during this term of the Maemo Community Council. The Maemo Community has seen a lot happen within the past six months: MeeGo gained its wings (and then had them proverbially clipped); we watched and attended the first-ever MeeGo Conference in Dublin, Ireland; the CSSU has grown steadily and surely and has been gaining more and more traction with casual users... The overall community psyche has had its fair share of ups and downs to say the least. If anything, Maemo has proven that it can stay active despite everything else that's going on around the open source ecosphere.

Now, the time has come to begin work towards the next term (March 2011 - September 2011) for the Maemo Community Council. This means publishing a list of all of the maemo.org members who are eligible to run, opening the self-nomination period, voting, etc. To add to the urgency of these tasks, we are running a little behind schedule as well. But, the Council has developed a timeline and long-time maemo.org supporter, Dave Neary, has accepted our request to assist us in with the technicalities of the election process (this is one of the things that Dave always took care of as a paid employee of maemo.org and he has graciously volunteered to help again). Thanks, Dave!

The timeline breaks down as follows:

• 2011-02-24 (Thursday): List published, nominations open
• 23:59 UTC, 2011-02-10 (Thursday): Nominations close
• 00:00 UTC, 2011-03-14 (Monday): Voting opens
• 23:59 UTC, 2011-03-20 (Sunday): Election closes

Hopefully, we can stick to the 24 February start-date, but it is all contigent on getting a list of elligible candidates published, etc. So, please allow for some fudging on the dates and time.

If you have been with maemo.org for a while and have over 100 Karma-points, you are elligible to run for canditacy. Please consider doing so, as our community needs the support of a cohesive Council now more than ever.

We are Maemo.