[maemo-community] I'm nominating myself for the Community Council

[From: Jeremiah C. Foster]

Hi,

I'd like to be on the community council for Maemo so I can highlight the important ways Maemo and maemo.org can preserve their community and software.

One benefit of Free Software is that it is not tied to any particular corporation or even any particular person. You can take it and change it at will. This benefit is something we who care about Maemo should exploit to preserve what we think is valuable.

How would we do this? Well, I think there are a number of ways. One of the most important I feel is the Debian DEX project started by the DPL and the former CTO of Canonical (which make Ubuntu.) http://dex.alioth.debian.org/ This would allow us to ensure that maemo software would not disappear entirely from the internet if maemo.org were shut down. It also is the responsible thing to do since maemo is largely based on Debian.

I'd also like to pry the maemo.org domain from Nokia's hands and ensure that it remains in the hands of the community. The people who have taken care of the maemo.org resources should get the recognition they deserve and continue to keep the site a lively place for those who are interested in talking about, developing, and using maemo. Yes, there are some complex issues involved, funding not the least of them, but I think there is an opportunity to take our fate into our own hands.

Lastly, it doesn't really matter if I'm elected or not and if I were, I'd only stay for one six month term, the point is to bring attention to the things that we can do as a community. I don't want us to sit around and feel sorry for ourselves when there is so much work to be done. Much of the work I would like to do regardless of my position on the council, but the advantage of being on the council is that this work would get more visibility and obviously I think that is important. 

I'm open to feedback and eager to hear what you think.

Regards,

Jeremiah