[maemo-community] Request: council at maemo.org

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 6:25 PM, Graham Cobb <g+770 at cobb.uk.net> wrote:
> On Sunday 23 November 2008 03:58:47 Ryan Abel wrote:
>
>> The ONLY purpose this serves is to make it easier for people to contact the
>> council directly (for whatever reason). Instead of having to hunt down each
>> individual council member's email address, they can simply email
>> council at maemo.org and have it go to all five. It is a tool of
>> convenience only.
>
> If it is for external people (say someone from Apple wanted to contact the
> Maemo council or something) then it should be an alias for
> maemo-community at maemo.org.

There is, I hope, some need for a way of external people contacting
the representative body of the Maemo Community. That is not (AFAIK)
the reason this has been mooted.

> If it is for internal use amongst the council members themselves (which is
> what the original request seemed to suggest) then it is a private mailing
> list.
>
> Maybe it should be set up but my concerns still stand.

They *are* valid concerns, and I like the idea of it being an
externally-postable, only-council-member-read mailing list, where the
archives are released at the end of each council's term.

Some examples of things which the Council should be involved in, but
not necessarily discussions which should happen in public at that
time[1]:

   * Job discussions for people employed by the Maemo Community.

   * Potentially sensitive or emotive topics which need some level of
     planning before being made public, with discussions from various
     groups needing to be held to see if an idea is viable.

   * Information from Nokia which will be released at some point, but
     they might need help, guidance or just need to brief the Community
     ahead of its public release. The "Harmattan delayed 10 years"
     thought expressed by Peter (hopefully without any grounding in
     reality ;-))

   * Invites to dinner after day 1 of OSiM World: wouldn't want the
     hoi poloi gatecrashing ;-)

None of these things need to be held under some maemo.org version of
the Official Secrets Act, but they can be sensitive. I'd be all in
favour of coming up with a way of opening up all emails to the address
at the end of the council's term, or some other time delay - as the
community sees fit.

Cheers,

Andrew

[1] These are based on things which were discussed and/or suggested at
    the Summit.

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
maemo.org Community Council member