• Ryan Abel – Hildon Foundation Director
• Andrew Flegg – Hildon Foundation Director
• Gido Griese – Hildon Foundation Director
• Rüdiger Schiller – Hildon Foundation Director, Maemo Community e.V. Director
• Falk Stern – Maemo Community e.V. Director [partial]

Minutes were produced by Andrew Flegg.

Agenda

1. Approval of Corporate Resolution to transfer monies to MCeV and close the Hildon Foundation bank account.
2. Approval for proceeding with a transfer of all rights, responsibilities and remaining assets to MCeV.

Minutes

1. 1. All present Hildon Foundation directors reviewed the proposed wording of the Corporate Resolution to transfer the bank account contents to Maemo Community e.V., and close Hildon Foundation’s bank account. No changes were proposed.
   2. A voice vote was taken on passing the proposed Corporate Resolution. The results were:

      Rüdiger Schiller: yes
      Ryan Abel: yes
      Andrew Flegg: yes
      Gido Griese: yes

      The Corporate Resolution was passed unanimously.

   3. Ryan Abel took an ACTION to produce the document and circulate it for signing physically and electronically. The document will be passed from Ryan -> Gido -> Rüdiger -> Andrew -> Craig. Due date: Thursday, 7th May 2015.
   4. Craig Woodward will also sign the document to represent his undertaking of the tasks laid out in the Corporate Resolution. Once signed, he will return the signed document to Hildon Foundation Board.
2. 1. Falk Stern, as another member Maemo Community e.V. board joined the meeting to discuss the agreement to transfer all assets, rights and responsibilities of Hildon Foundation to Maemo Community e.V.
   2. All present reviewed the proposed wording of the agreement to transfer Hildon Foundation activities to Maemo Community e.V. No changes were proposed.
   3. A voice vote was taken on passing the proposed agreement. The results were:

      Rüdiger Schiller: yes
      Andrew Flegg: yes
      Falk Stern: yes
      Ryan Abel: yes
      Gido Griese: yes

      The agreement was passed unanimously. MCeV bylaws only require two signatures.

   4. Ryan Abel took an ACTION to produce the document and circulate it for signing physically and electronically. The document will be passed from Ryan -> Gido -> Falk -> Rüdiger -> Andrew. Due date: Monday, 11th May 2015.
   5. Once signed, Andrew Flegg will email the document to both Hildon Foundation and Maemo Community e.V. boards for their records.
3. 1. AOB: Following on from the execution of these two agreements, Andrew Flegg took an ACTION to work with Craig Woodward and, if possible, Rob Bauer to tidy up the affairs of Hildon Foundation and close the corporation. Before executing this, a further Board Meeting will be held to ratify the closing of the corporation.
   2. With no other business, the meeting was closed at 22:50 UTC.

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Nokia has been the owner of the features of the Maemo brand that have been used in connection with mobile devices and software distributed by Nokia, as well as supporting the maintenance of the Maemo Website for the Maemo community. Nokia has transferred the Maemo brand features to Hildon, who will continue to support the Maemo community.

Hildon shall assume the full responsibility and liability for the maintenance and support of all the activity that is and will be on-going on the Maemo Website. For clarity, Hildon is not responsible for customer support for Nokia mobile devices using Maemo, such as N900 and/or N9. Following the acquisition of substantially all of Nokia’s Devices & Services business by Microsoft in April 2014, Microsoft is now responsible for the support of Nokia branded mobile devices. Local contact details can be found at www.nokia.com/global/wayfinder.

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• 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.

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Agenda:

1. Formal acceptance of new board members.
2. Bank account access and financial details (including any external services in the Foundation’s name, e.g., Amazon.de).
3. Incorporation status (are we 501(c)(3) or not?) and fixing PayPal donations(!).
4. Officer selection for treasurer, secretary, chair, and communications.
5. Briefing on Nokia handover contract and any other non-public negotiations the board has been involved in.
6. Availability of email exchanges related to board business.
7. Discussion of any private keys the Foundation has.
8. Briefing on details of any ongoing business or negotiations.
9. Check by-law and incorporation in the state of Pennsylvania requirements for audio-meetings and see what we can do to make IRC a valid channel for votes and other decisions.

Other topics:

• Review the budgeting for the next year with the council (the techstaff would really appreciate populating another blade).
• Regarding private keys (7.), we should probably ensure some kind of archiving bot is added to the board@ alias to ensure that the official business channel of the Foundation is archived for future handover purposes.

Meeting is opened at 19:10 UTC

Attending:

• Ryan Abel / GeneralAntilles (Director Elect) (chaired first half)
• Andrew Flegg / Jaffa (Director Elect) (chaired second half after selection as chair)
• Gido Griese / win7mac (Director Elect)
• Rüdiger Schiller / Chemist (Director Elect)
• Craig Woodward / Woody14619 (Director)
• Jörg Reisenweber / DocScrutinizer (HFC Council member)

Formal acceptance of new board members:

• Craig Woodward as only attending Director and Chair recognises all members elected to serve via the election. (Craig Woodward, Ryan Abel, Andrew Flegg, Rüdiger Schiller, and Gido Griese)

Bank account access and financial details:

• There is a strong desire to see multiple board members on the account.
• Three directors are US based, which may be required for account access.
• A notion of opening an EU account for simplifying/minimializing fees is suggested.
• Craig is the only one with local branches for the current bank.
• An agreement is made to attempt to place Craig, Andrew and Gido on the account access list.

Incorporation status and PayPal:

• Craig relays that PayPal (at last instance) had touble linking to First Niagra, which was not resolvable due to lack of access to the account.
• We need to confirm with Rob if 501(c)(3) paperwork was filed. It is Craig’s belief that it was not filed, and that the current status is taxed corporation.
• Andrew raised concerns about tax implications based on that. Craig will consult his tax CPA about the requirements and filing issues.
• The concept of starting a sister organization (German e.V.) is discussed.

Officer selection:

• Several offers and counter-offers are made for positions.
• The final settled positions appear to be:

• Ryan – Communications
• Andrew – Chair and Vice-Treasurer
• Gido – Treasurer
• Craig – Secretary and Vice-Treasurer

Briefing on Nokia negotiations and other non-public issues:

• This requires Rob’s input, and he is not present.

There is a movement to allow for official consideration and voting via PGP signed e-mails. Rüdiger will organize getting everyone’s keys signed and cross-signed to create a formal trust chain.

There is a movement to consider the rest of the topics via e-mail, which is agreed to all around.

An attempt at a voice confirmation meeting is made but does not work. A voice-only meeting to confirm the topics discussed is scheduled for the 17th.

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Thank you for your response to our Open Letter. As you can see from the community conversation regarding your response — here, as well as various social media circles — most of our members want more. The Hildon Foundation appreciate the invitation to become “true pioneers,” but in all honesty, the Maemo community has been a true pioneer for many years now as a unique open source initiative combining developers and users with a community repository of applications and platform components.

This being said, we understand that Jolla is a future that we would like to help make successful if possible. Currently, neither Jolla nor any Jolla affiliates affiliates (Mer, Nemo, Sailfish OS, etc.) have any sort of “community,” user base, or public space for communication to speak of. These assets can be extended if, for example, you are interested in a community repository, cross-platform development, or helping developers migrate to Sailfish. We had already intended to provide a public space for Jolla/Nemo/Sailfish and will continue to do so regardless. Would Jolla like to help with any of these efforts that will benefit Jolla?

We thank you for indicating on our website that Jolla agrees to support a Sailfish on N900 project. Of course, our community contains the world’s most knowledgeable developers on the N900 device. We would promote and host the project in a variety of ways to leverage our existing expertise and bring in new participants.

What type of support and/or cooperation does Jolla envision providing?

Thank you,
The Hildon Foundation

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Happy New Year! And, congratulations on your successful launch in November. We were all watching in hopeful anticipation and were pleasantly surprised. You are doing things that many of us never thought possible.

Like Jolla’s open ecosystem, Hildon Foundation has also been born as the only fully incorporated, non-profit organization with a mission to promote open source software derived from Maemo. So, naturally, it makes sense that our organizations should cooperate with each other. Hopefully, you won’t mind that we’re publishing this as an “open letter” on our blog (http://hildonfoundation.org/open-letter-fr…ation-to-jolla/) in the hopes that a greater community dialog will occur. If you would like us to conduct any of our conversations privately, just let us know.

As some of you are aware, the Hildon Foundation finds itself in quite a difficult spot at this new year with the impending departure of Nokia. Not only are we gaining full control of the maemo.org infrastructure (housing, developing, and supporting related open source software), and receiving pleas from N9/950 users who need a new space for community and support, but we are also taking over all financial responsibilities. Thankfully, after our initial fundraising effort, we have received over $2,000.00 US from our gracious community members. But, we need more.

In fact, we are now in the process of finding willing sponsors of all types to help fund our open software ecosystem. This is why we’re writing to you. We would like you to consider sponsoring or working with Hildon Foundation in some way. In particular, we would also like to open the community venue for Sailfish OS.

In our eyes, it would be hard to deny that the Hildon Foundation would be a beneficial advocate for Jolla. Jolla is special to us. In essence, you are Maemo’s sister. And, in all honesty, we would like to support you. In fact, we have been quite supportive to many projects and initiatives over the years based on these “gifts” (both downstream and upstream).

Some examples of the work that has been done over the past years include:

• Very intensive Google Summer of Code application development
• Three successful Coding Competitions
• Extensive progress in CSSU development
• Over 100 million software downloads
• Unified development efforts for much open source software (Linux, Mozilla, Debian, etc.)
• An Extras repository full of QA tested community applications
• Crowd-sourced brainstorming of all types
• Major global conferences (under Nokia’s sponsorship)
• Developer Device programs
• Local meetups and hackfests
• General community evangelism
• Etc.

Still, the track record doesn’t address the current challenges or pay the bills. We would welcome discussion about a relationship between our organizations… If anything, we would like to form a friendship. If Jolla would be willing to become a sponsor and aid us in promoting the open source software aspects of Jolla and Sailfish — or, possibly even foot the bill — we would offer valuable community support to Jolla. In fact, we see a huge possibility of the Hildon Foundation becoming a part of the Jolla ecosystem or Sailfish Alliance itself.

Thank you for considering this suggestion of formal cooperation. Regardless of the outcome, we wish Jolla nothing but success, for this year and for the unforeseeable future.

Best Regards,
The Hildon Foundation

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As we move into the new year, we’re also faced with a very new phase of life — that is, complete control of the maemo.org infrastructure, meaning community governance of the Maemo Community and everything that it implies (community servers and software repositories, various maemo-related software and technology, the talk.maemo.org forum and wiki, etc.). It’s a lot to fathom, but we are certain that if any community can handle it, this one can.

Fundraising

Likewise, most of you know that the new changes require that we, as a community, foot the bill for all of these new responsibilities. Late last year, we began a fundraising drive that began on TMO and then received a permanent home at http://hildonfoundation.org/support/. If you haven’t donated yet, please consider it. You may donate any amount. Just keep in mind that you money really matters — it is what will help to keep this community alive and functioning.

Volunteers

Now, more than ever, we need your help. We need those who can donate to donate, of course. But, we also a need a President and others with advanced business-related skills such as accounting, marketing, public relations, and social media, just to mention just a few. We especially need those who can manage the technical infrastructure to step up and volunteer. There are many new ways you can now contribute even if you are not a software developer or engineer.

Sponsorship

Speaking of money, it is one of the reasons why we are asking for your ear — and cooperation — again. In the coming weeks, we are going to be asking a number of open source companies and projects to also consider sponsoring the Maemo cause. During the past eight years, Maemo has done more for open source than just housing a niche mobile OS. If you think about it, technologies such as Linux, Debian, GNOME, Qt, Mozilla (and a whole lot more) have all benefited from both downstream and upstream support and enhancements due to this community. Similarly, that corporations and technology of all sorts can flourish with the support of open source advocates. And, if you didn’t know this already, the Maemo Community has become one of the largest open source communities in the world, currently standing at approximately 60,000 members, 5,000 of you being active participants in some way or another.

So who are some good candidates who might sponsor Maemo?

As stated, there are several initiatives whom we might approach. But, these decisions shouldn’t just be made by the Hildon Foundation or the Maemo Community Council. They should be made by you — active, participating Maemo Community members — as well. Do you have any ideas? Are you in a position where you can help us contact someone you know or work with? Please let us know.

Open Communication

One of the things that the Hildon Foundation will attempt to do (when practical) is keep communications relating to possible community sponsorship in the open. So, keep this in mind when giving us your suggestions. We will have a standard, unified letter drafted soon in which we can send to any potential sponsors — and the community at large. Hopefully, this will help to create a cohesive conversation about our community in which every voice is heard.

Jolla

One obvious candidate that we are going to contact is Jolla. Not only does Jolla find its roots in the history of Maemo, but many of the people who started Jolla come from this community and from Nokia. You will see our correspondence with them soon.

In Conclusion

Please consider helping in any way. If you have the means to donate, do so. If you know people in the open source world who could help us, please connect us. If you’ve never known how to participate in the Maemo Community before, please let this be the time when you join us. Our community is important. Help us to keep it strong.

Thank you,
The Hildon Foundation

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Because of your donations and the help of many community members — especially Reggie Suplido (rsuplido), long-time Maemo Community member and Super Admin of TMO (talk.maemo.org) and internettablettalk.com — we were able to purchase a license for vBulletin, the software that runs the TMO forums.

But, what does this mean for our community? It means that when we are set to migrate all of the maemo.org infrastructure to new servers at the end of this year, TMO will be coming with it. Hopefully, due to the migration and the vBulletin license, the community downtime will be negligible.

Again, thank you for supporting this community. And, if you haven’t donated any money yet, please consider doing so here:

http://hildonfoundation.org/support/

Happy Holidays everyone!

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• Tim Samoff / timsamoff (video)
• Iván Gálvez Junquera / ivgalvez (audio only)
• Cosimo Kroll / zehjotkah (video)

Maemo Community Migration Issues:

• Nokia paying for initial migration… What will happen in the future? What will the potential costs of management and maintenance?
  • We need to verify these issues with Nemein.

HF Board Meeting Minutes:

• Board Minutes to be published on HFO from now on — and aggregated to pmo.

Board Member Issues:

• In lieu of Randall Arnold’s (texrat) departure from the Board of Directors, the remaining Board members has asked Rob Bauer (SD69) to step in as the replacement — and he has accepted..
  • Rob will continue to serve as Secretary for the Board.
• Tim will talk to Niels Breet (xfade) about email aliases for board@maemo.org email address.

TMO Migration:

• Privacy issues?
  • Reggie Suplido (rsuplido) not very concerned.
  • Andrew Flegg (Jaffa) report: ”Data Protection Act doesn’t apply IIRC: it’s either not customer data (because it’s not particularly personally identifiable) or because it’s just an address book.”
  • This subject needs additional research, although the Board needs to make a decision now…
    • Board agrees unanimously on moving TMO to the same server as the rest of the maemo.org infrastructure, managed by Nemein.
• Reggie Suplido will take care of the migration with the support of Nemein.
  • Reggie will upgrade Rüdiger Schiller (chemist) to administrator of TMO to handle maintenance in the future.
• Will Nemein provide this migration service for free?
• vBeulletin License:
  • We need to purchase a license ($195 for the current version to avoid templating and plugin compatibility issues).
  • Cosimo will purchase the vBulletin license in Hildon Foundation’s name, via the PayPal account.
    • Needs to know exactly where to purchase the license.
    • Cosimo will email Reggie: Reggie will need to provide the information.
  • This needs to be done before the end of the year.

New Maemo Community Administrators:

• Ruediger Schiller (chemist) appointed as TMO administrator.
  • Board agrees unanimously.
• Michael Demetriou (qwazix) has volunteered to help with TMO server administration if needed.
  • This role is not necessary at this time, so Michael was not appointed to the position.
  • If needed, we will revisit this option in the future.

Fundraising Status Update:

• $2258.15 has been donated at this point.
• There were some reporting issues with duplicate entries in the first reports, but these have now been resolved.
• Bank account paperwork is being processed at the moment.
  • A specific HF PayPal account will then be attached to the new account.
  • All of the current moneys will then be transferred to the new account.
• Some people cannot use PayPal, so we need to institute a method for them to make donations to the bank account directly.
• The bank account has a 50-cent per transaction fee if 75 transactions per statement cycle is breached. Likewise, there may be a fairly stiff fee for international wire transfers ($40 US?).
  • Cosimo will check on this.
  • Rob is providing more information.
• Tim will complete unified letter to potential sponsors.
• All Board members to compile list of potential sponsors and contacts.
• How will communication of donations be conveyed?
  • Page on HFO already setup: http://hildonfoundation.org/supporters/
  • Cosimo will continue updating report on HFO.
• Should we upgrade to a premium PayPal account?
  • Public donation reports, recurring payments, etc.
  • Cosimo will check on the cost.

HF Web Page and Communications Officer:

• Someone needs to admin the social presence of HF.
• Andrew Flegg (Jaffa), Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles), Andrew Olmsted (fiferboy)?
  • Tim will send email request.

Other Items/Issues:

• The Scratchbox.org team has expressed interest being hosted with the maemo.org community.
  • We need to talk with Nokia and Nemein.
    • Iván will take care of this communication.
• Holiday season: Tim and Iván will be traveling; Cosimo will be on two-week vacation; Rob’s status is unknown at this time?
  • We will communicate via email until the next meeting date (week of January 7, 2013).

Meeting concluded.

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Attending:

• Tim Samoff / timsamoff (video)
• Iván Gálvez Junquera / ivgalvez (audio only)
• Rob Bauer / SD69 (audio only)

Fundraising:

• Do we need two bank accounts? (One in the U.S. and one in Europe?)
• Hildon Foundation is not yet tax exempt and therefore, donation cannot be tax deductible.
• We need to begin a PayPal method for donations right away.
  • Rob will seed a bank account for use for Hildon Foundation and for PayPal donations.
  • This is now partially complete, although we need to convert it to an HF account (currently, the money is going to Cosimo’s account, which is the same account used for the Coding Competitions).
• TMO & vBulletin:
  • We need to fund the vBulletin license.
  • Should the fundraiser be specifically for TMO & vBulletin or for maemo.org in general?
    • TMO is maemo.org to some extent, so the fundraiser can be more general.
  • Cosimo to start a thread on TMO.

HF Board Members:

• Randall Arnold to leave HF Board of Directors for personal reasons.

  • How to communicate this to the community?
  • Randy needs to communicate this (post a resignation) so that there are no misconceptions.
    • Unfortunately, this has not happened yet.
• How should we communicate the need for a new board member?
  • Do we need to hold a new election?
  • Should we inquire with someone from another FLOSS organization? (Jolla, Sailfish OS, Linux Foundation, etc.?)
  • Should it be someone from the community?
  • What about Rob?
  • Community needs to advise…
    • We should post a request to specific community contributors to advise the Board on the next moves…
    • Iván will take care of this communication.
• Tim to be appointed as new Chairman of the Board.

Maemo Community Council:

• The Board needs to appoint the new Council.
  • Communication: “The Board votes the newly elected Council in to take responsibility for running, administrating, and managing daily operations of maemo.org.”
    • The exact terms about what this means are still under discussion.

Maemo Community Administrator:

• Let’s ask Joerg Reisenweber (joerg_rw) since he has already volunteered and has credentials in Maemo Community.
  • With Council’s agreement, we can announce Joerg as the maemo.org admin.
• The Council, along with the admin, will need to take care of finding others with specific skillsets for keeping maemo.org running.
• This person will be responsible for maemo.org and not other hildonfoundation.org projects.
• Maemo Community Infrastructure:
• Some NDA-related discussion here (documented in another location).
• HF has no budget yet.
• Someone will need to be responsible for the Midgard CMS.
  • Neimen hasn’t sent any info about the other failing technologies within maemo.org yet (wiki, Autobuilder, etc.).
  • We still haven’t received a proposal for monthly service charges.
  • We also need to continue dialog with Neimen about their intentions to continue supporting maemo.org — or not.
• Backups have been completed for nearly every aspect of maemo.org.
• Iván will take care of an announcement on the Board blog about maemo.org transfer, including thanking Reggie Suplido for his help, as well as the announcement about the Council.
• We also need to find a suitable replacement for Reggie.
• We need to work out terms for locating different technologies in various global locations.

Meeting concluded.

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Thank you, everyone, for your support and dedication to this cause. The Maemo Community is one of the most incredible open source communities around — and, exactly why the Hildon Foundation was formed.

You are the best.

If you haven’t donated yet, please consider it. It is the only way that this community will survive. You may make a contribution (any amount helps) here:

http://hildonfoundation.org/support/

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http://hildonfoundation.org

As you’ll see, there is a fairly easy way to donate to the Hildon Foundation and the Maemo Community:

http://hildonfoundation.org/support/

This is the same method that’s being used here on tmo:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1303767

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• Tim Samoff / timsamoff
• Iván Gálvez Junquera / ivgalvez (via chat only)
• Rob Bauer / SD69 (via chat only)
• Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah)

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Attending:

• Randall Arnold / texrat
• Tim Samoff / timsamoff
• Ivan Galvez / ivgalvez
• Robert Bauer/ SD69
• Craig Woodward (intermittent) / woody14619

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