[maemo-community] Draft Bylaws for Maemo Non-Profit Entity

[From: robert bauer]

Hello,

In order to continue the community at www.maemo.org in the future, it will
be necessary to migrate much of the infrastructure and associated elements
to a new site and to establish a separate entity for that purpose.  See
generally http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=84933.  The attached
bylaws are proposed for discussion.  Please note that this is primarily a
legal document and this is not the appropriate place to discuss many of the
issues associated with the actual migration of the community.

The first thing you may notice is the name.  Because Maemo is trademarked
by Nokia and we don't want to experience problems, or even delay, while the
issue is worked out, we have decided to suggest Hildon Foundation as the
name.  There is also a recognition that Maemo may be regarded as having
commercially tarnished by Nokia's negligence of the software, and so it
might be good to use a different name in any event.  Either one of the
domain names www.maemocommunity.org and www.hildonfoundation.org have been
registered and will be available for the community if we choose to use them.

Because this is a legal document, the discussion of the mission is broadly
stated in historical context so that the entity has much flexibility.
Although Maemo and Hildon are mentioned, this should not be regarded as any
implication at all that Qt, Harmattan, CSSU, Cordia, kp, or any other
specific software related to Maemo will not be supported by the entity.

The operations of the NPE allow it to cooperate with Nokia, Jolla, or other
commercial entity.  However, the entity is obligated to itself permanently
be an open source organization.

Perhaps the section of most interest and discussion will be Membership and
Governance.  It is suggested that we keep the present "open" nature of the
maemo community to the extent practical.  But this is not meant to be
predetermined and alternative structures may be proposed and adopted. It is
also unknown whether a voting mechanism opf the current maemo
infrastructure will continue to be available.  The composition of the
initial Board also needs to be carefully determined and this is surrounded
by brackets.

The finances and budgets will be worked out once the entity is in place and
can establish a bank account.

The jurisdiction does not dictate the location of the servers or
repositories, or the nationality of the Board members.  Pennsylvania is
suggested because it has more lax requirements than Delaware and better
suited for smaller organizations.  Europe is also available and so the
jurisdiction is surrounded by brackets.  The main considerations are speed
and start-up costs.

Council discussed a prior draft of the bylaws at its July 6 meeting and you
may refer to the logs for that discussion.  Please don't take offense if an
issue important to you has not been mentioned in this mail - please raise
it and discuss it as you wish.

Rob (SD69)
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