Dear Maemo community, I have the great honor of introducing the new Community Council for the upcoming Q2/2014 period.

The members of the new council are:

• Joerg Reisenweber (joerg_rw)
• Jussi Ohenoja (juiceme)
• Niel Nielsen (nieldk)
• Peter Leinchen (peterleinchen)
• Philippe Coval (rzr)

The voting results can be seen on the voting page

I want to thank warmly all the members of the community who participated in this most important action of choosing a new council for us!

The new council shall meet on the #maemo-meeting IRC channel today at 20:00 UTC for the formal handover with the passing council.

Jussi Ohenoja, Council Chair Q1/2014

On behalf of the outgoing Maemo Community Council

Discussion started last year about moving the US-based Hildon Foundation non-profit operations to Europe. After a positive reception to the initial proposal, some further planning by the community, and a lot of foot work, work is progressing on setting up a German e.V. (which was selected due to limited options available in Europe).
The move serves several purposes:

• It gets us out from under the cost and regulatory burdens of operating in the US. The US is expensive and difficult to operate in for small non-profits. Taxes and regulations from two major entities: the US Federal Government and the State of Pennsylvania (where the Hildon Foundation is registered), which both require annual paperwork be submitted on the fiscal operations of the entity, are expensive and time-consuming for an all-volunteer operation funded by donations.
• It brings the major operations of maemo.org all within a single regulatory environment. The operations of maemo.org are almost exclusively hosted at IPHH in Germany, bringing the organizational stewardship into the Euro-zone reduces the number of regulator issues which must be understood and dealt with by the foundation.
• Finally, it eliminates the large overhead involved with international money transfers. The hardware for maemo.org is hosted at IPHH (many thanks to them) in Germany, and with the billing currency in Euros, each transfer of the annual hosting-fee costs about $40 instead of the few cents it would cost wiring it from within the SEPA-Zone. Payments for hardware purchases, and other invoices are almost all going to entities in Europe, so eliminating the currency exchange overhead will significantly reduce costs for the continued operation of maemo.org.

The Hildon Foundation assets will need to be transferred to the new e.V. once its legal registration is completed. The Hildon Foundation will then be dissolved. This is slightly complicated by the aforementioned regulatory burdens in the US, but will hopefully be finalized by the end of the third quarter of this year. In terms of obligations, responsibilities and relationship to the community, this move has no effect: it is purely a technical measure to allow the Foundation to better manage the community’s assets.

Meeting held on FreeNode, channel #maemo-meeting (logs)

Attending: Philippe Coval (rZr), Peter Leinchen (peterleinchen), Gido Griese (Win7Mac), Paul Healy (sixwheeledbeast), Ruediger Schiller (chem|st), Niel Nielsen (nieldk), Jussi Ohenoja (juiceme).

Absent: Joerg Reisenweber (DocScrutinizer05)

Summary of topics (ordered by discussion):
- Inaugural meeting of the new Maemo Council 2Q/2014
- Discussion on Council work media
- Comments by DocScrutinizer05>

Topic (Inaugural meeting of the new Maemo Council 2Q/2014):

• The meeting started at 20:01 UTC. The new council assembled, and juiceme welcomed the new members.
• The election results can be seen on the voting page. There was discussion on the vote counting algorithm (STV) and the number of ballots cast in the election.
• The council decided to continue the present practice of having weekly meetings on tuesdays at 20:00 UTC. All council members live on UTC, UTC+1, UTC+2 zones.
• There was some discussion of the roles in the Council. After discussion nieldk proposed peterleinchen as Chair & Secretary and juiceme seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous (4/4) and peterleinchen accepted the position.

Topic (Discussion on Council work media):

• There was discussion on how to handle the tasks and documents during council work; possibilities are to use piratepad or wikipage on Maemo for collaboration. The advantage of piratepad would be easy multiediting capabilities, on the other hand wiki is more secure.
• The council voted to use a wiki page as work medium but as wiki cannot be set up as private, email ans piratepad are kept as alternative for in-progress/confidental work.
• Sixwheeledbeast set up a wiki page for Council agenda.

Topic (Comments by DocScrutinizer05):

• Joerg came on the IRC channel later when the meeting was over, having been taken ill, but he had the following comments;
  • The Council has only one set of rules which define what the council is and what the council does.
  • The Council is not subject to directives from any other body.
  • Council work is generally done in the public, unless mandated by specific necessity. For confidental work there is the council members mailing list.
  • Since Hildon Foundation has accepted the Maemo Council as its Council, the Maemo Council is also the Council of the new unified Maemo e.V. that is going to take over the responsibilities of Hildon Foundation.

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