[maemo-community] Election announcement article (formatting & questions)

[From: Jeremiah Foster]

On Aug 19, 2011, at 13:54, Graham Cobb wrote:

> On Friday 19 August 2011 10:19:00 Jeremiah Foster wrote:
>> Drop the referendum. 
> 
> I think the referendum has value, mostly as a poll.

But I think that value lies in what the council actually proposes to do. As jaffa has shown a referendum can't possibly cover many of the potential ways forward.

>  I think there is a case 
> that the maemo community should drop the infrastructure and just become a 
> forum and a wiki, like many other open source communities working on devices 
> without (official) support from the manufacturers (think TiVo, OpenWRT, 
> OpenStora, just to mention three I have participated in).  

I think that case should be made by someone running for the council. I think it is cogent and reasonable but I don't see that fitting into the referendum as the referendum is currently composed.
> 
> I think it would be useful to get the views of the community (after a month of 
> debate) on whether they see that as the answer or want to preserve the much 
> larger community infrastructure we currently have in Maemo.org.
> 
> The debate on the referendum topic would promote further discussion of your 
> ideas for closer integration with Debian, ideas for closer links to MeeGo 
> and/or the N9 community, the future of the the community SSU, etc.

That is the hope - that those who care about the community come forward with their vision.
> 
> For that reason, I see both the referendum and pushing council candidates to 
> state their proposals as useful.  I think just relying on the candidate 
> manifestos could easily lead to deadlock -- imagine if you were elected and 
> also someone who thought that instead of getting closer to Debian we should be 
> getting closer to MeeGo: I think that a clear referendum result showing that 
> the community wanted the Maemo.org community to continue to be active would 
> help encourage the two of you to work together to try to achieve those goals 
> even with some compromise.  Without it there is a danger that each of you say 
> "I have a mandate for my proposal" and we just end up with deadlock.

I don't think (hope) that there will be deadlock. I think the council can have different representatives going in different directions. People will vote with their feet - if they want to be closer to Debian they'll move in that direction, if they want their own thing they'll do that. But you're right of course, having consensus will help move things forward.
> 
> [Jeremiah, I'm just using your proposals as an example, I am not suggesting 
> that you would actually behave like that!]

=)

Regards,

Jeremiah