Nominations over for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council

Last week, Michael Demetriou announced the closure of the nominations for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council: "The nomination period for candidates for the upcoming Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council has ended on the 23rd of the current month of April. The voting begins on Tuesday the 30th of April. We are happy to see more than enough candidates to hold an election this time. The candidates are as follows: Rüdiger Schiller (chemist), Joerg Reisenweber (joerg_rw/DocScrutinizer), Edoardo Spadolini (kerio), Christian Ratzenhofer (merlin1991), Aakash Sadh (Kash), Michael Demetriou (qwazix), and sixwheeledbeast (sixwheeledbeast)."

Voting for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council begins on 2013-04-30 at 23:59 UTC

The election for Maemo Community Council and the Hildon Foundation Council will be opening this week on 2013-04-30 at 23:59 UTC. The election should run through Tuesday 2013-05-07 at 23:59 UTC.

The election will be for both the Maemo Community Council and a Hildon Foundation Council. Unfortunately, this situation arose by happenings that seem primarily rooted in political motivations. These motivations prevented the current Maemo Community Council from taking on the mantle and responsibilities of the Hildon Foundation Council to provide for a smooth transition.

The compromise reached has left the electorate voting on one set of candidates for two bodies, with the idea being that voters can voice their opinion about whether the Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council should be two separate bodies or a single one by the composition of their ballots for each body (identical ballots indicating desire for a single body).

Editorially speaking, this publication is in favor of a single body. This being the only sensible interpretation of the intentions of the by-laws in providing for a Hildon Foundation Council, as a Maemo Community Council without Nokia and with a nearly-duplicate body in the Hildon Foundation Council would serve very little purpose. If you prefer to see a single council body, cast both ballots identically.

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Nominations over for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council
   • Voting for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council begins on 2013-04-30 at 23:59 UTC
2. Community
   • Voting on the Maemo Community Council election rules refendum closes

Nominations over for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council

Last week, Michael Demetriou announced the closure of the nominations for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council: "The nomination period for candidates for the upcoming Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council has ended on the 23rd of the current month of April. The voting begins on Tuesday the 30th of April. We are happy to see more than enough candidates to hold an election this time. The candidates are as follows: Rüdiger Schiller (chemist), Joerg Reisenweber (joerg_rw/DocScrutinizer), Edoardo Spadolini (kerio), Christian Ratzenhofer (merlin1991), Aakash Sadh (Kash), Michael Demetriou (qwazix), and sixwheeledbeast (sixwheeledbeast)."

Voting for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council begins on 2013-04-30 at 23:59 UTC

The election for Maemo Community Council and the Hildon Foundation Council will be opening this week on 2013-04-30 at 23:59 UTC. The election should run through Tuesday 2013-05-07 at 23:59 UTC.

The election will be for both the Maemo Community Council and a Hildon Foundation Council. Unfortunately, this situation arose by happenings that seem primarily rooted in political motivations. These motivations prevented the current Maemo Community Council from taking on the mantle and responsibilities of the Hildon Foundation Council to provide for a smooth transition.

The compromise reached has left the electorate voting on one set of candidates for two bodies, with the idea being that voters can voice their opinion about whether the Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council should be two separate bodies or a single one by the composition of their ballots for each body (identical ballots indicating desire for a single body).

Editorially speaking, this publication is in favor of a single body. This being the only sensible interpretation of the intentions of the by-laws in providing for a Hildon Foundation Council, as a Maemo Community Council without Nokia and with a nearly-duplicate body in the Hildon Foundation Council would serve very little purpose. If you prefer to see a single council body, cast both ballots identically.

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Nominations over for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council
   • Voting for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council begins on 2013-04-30 at 23:59 UTC
2. Community
   • Voting on the Maemo Community Council election rules refendum closes

This week in Maemo Community politics

Maemo Community politics always get interesting during periods of change. Nokia is in the process of handing over control of maemo.org and its infrastructure to the community, which makes this one of the largest fundamental changes in community history. Big change, lots of politics.

Hildon Foundation Council calls elections for Council and Board

The current council's term is coming to an end, which makes it time for another round of elections to be called. In addition to the council election, the council is looking to call elections for the Hildon Foundation Board given that the current board is occupied only by appointed directors. Council chair Alexander Kozhevnikov announced the election timeline and rational last week: "As many of you are aware, the Hildon Foundation Board of Directors has come to be filled with all unelected Directors."

"There has been some significant desire to have a reelection take place once the infrastructure migration issues were settled."

"[...]"

"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."

"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."

"[...]"

"Thus, we hereby announce the elections for both the Hildon Foundation Board and the Council."

Nominations for the board and council are open, so if you have an interest in running for one of these positions, or know someone you'd like to see run, send an email to the community mailing list at maemo-community@maemo.org.

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Hildon Foundation Council calls elections for Council and Board
2. Applications
   • Dark theme for stock Twitter client with additional features
3. Development
   • SDK for Sailfish OS now available for Windows and Mac alongside Linux

Proposed referendum to tidy up Community Council election process before change in scope

When the Hildon Foundation was formed the by-laws provided for a Hildon Foundation Council to replace the Maemo Community Council, as an interface with Nokia is no longer needed. The stated intention of the primary author of the by-laws, Craig Woodward, was that the Maemo Community Council would transition directly into the Hildon Foundation Council and that these were not two separate councils, but a change primarily in name. There has been some disagreement on this point from certain community members, who hold the opinion that the Maemo Community Council has no authority over the Hildon Foundation since it is not the Hildon Foundation Council.

New Hildon Foundation Board member Jim Jaglieski's letter of introduction

In last week's issue, we covered Tim Samoff's resignation from the Hildon Foundation Board and the appointment of Craig Woodward and Jim Jaglieski as replacements for Tim and Ivan Galvez Junquera's vacated seats. Craig should be known to the community, as he served on the Maemo Community Council and was one of the primary architects of the Hildon Foundation by-laws, but Jim is new to the Maemo community. To help introduce himself, he posted a letter to Talk: "First of all, a bit about me. I've been hacking and developing FOSS for several decades, making me an old-timer. I was part of the Apache Group, the original team of Apache httpd developers who later went on to found the Apache Software Foundation, which is likely one of the best known Open Source Foundations in existence. I've been on the board of the ASF since day 1, serving as Sec/EVP, Chairman and President. All directors are elected by the ASF membership. Despite some vague allegations, I am not some FOSS politician; I am a coder, and still am active on numerous FOSS projects, as a simple look on Ohloh would show. Because of my work, I was also elected into the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and the OuterCurve Foundation. I also speak at conferences about FOSS, communities, licensing, etc... I work for Red Hat."

Tim Samoff resigns from Hildon Foundation

The Hildon Foundation has had a rather bumpy start to its stewardship of maemo.org (which should become official this month with the final infrastructure migrations and the end of negotiations with Nokia): resignation of a string of board members, friction with the council and members of the community, and drawn-out negotiations with Nokia over the transfer of ownership of maemo.org.

Sailfish OS SDK released for Linux

At Mobile World Congress this week, Jolla have been out and about touting their platform, and new SDK release: "The Sailfish OS is a mobile-optimized operating system that has the flexibility, ubiquity and stability of the Linux core with a cutting edge user experience built with the renowned Qt platform."

The Sailfish homepage says OS X and Windows users should "stay tuned."

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Sailfish OS SDK released for Linux
2. Applications
   • LINKer lets shortcuts to anything be put on N9 homescreen
3. Development
   • Develop apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry10 through pure Qt Quick
4. Announcements
   • Chemical Elements periodic table search for Harmattan

Ubuntu Phone developer preview available 21st February

Good news for the open source mobile device platform world, Canonical will be releasing the first developer preview of their Ubuntu Phone platform on February 21st: "The software, intended both for developers and adventurous end-users, will be made available as images for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus handset as well as LG's Nexus 4. Source code will also be released for those who would like to port the operating system to other phones."

Like any "developer preview" this one is likely to be rough around the edges and not suitable for day-to-day use, it will be interesting too see what Canonical's offering feels like first hand, however.

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Ubuntu Phone developer preview available 21st February
2. Applications
   • NumPy available for Harmattan
   • MatPlotLib available for Harmattan
3. Community
   • Hildon Foundation Board minutes from February 17th meeting
4. In the Wild
   • Tizen 2.0 SDK and source code release

The four wheels spinning MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan

Eighteen months ago, following the launch of the N9, Quim Gil posted his thoughts that even if the N9 was the "only MeeGo device from Nokia", the future wasn't all dead: the Linux kernel, Qt, WebKit and a "swipe" UX are "what really matters about MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan when it comes to discuss about future products, platforms and ecosystems. Note that these four pieces are very versatile and flexible, they can play with each other and they can also head towards other paths, offering many possibilities for future products."