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

[From: robert bauer]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Andrew Flegg <andrew at bleb.org> wrote:

> On 10 July 2012 17:06, robert bauer <nybauer at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> Why does HF need "membership"? It doesn't seem related to who can vote
> the Board in.
>

It is related.  The subsequents Boards are selected by a vote of HF
community members.



> Perhaps it would be useful to have a wiki page or something where you
> describe the "vision" underlying these Bylaws, and so what they're
> trying to support.
>
The vision is to keep the governance similar to maemo.org, while complying
with the necessary legalities for an NPE.



>
> On the voting section/changes, there's a clause:
>
> > [...] except the requirement that software must be freely available under
> > an open source license as defined by the Open Software Foundation.
>
> AFAICS, this is the first reference to this "requirement".
>

It's the last one in the Functions section.  Perhaps it's not clear that it
is a "requirement" and so that could be clarified.  Should it be clarified
in Functions or should it be made part of the Mission?



>
> However, on the whole, it looks like a good start. There seem to be
> some gaps which the Community Council Election process covers, though:
>
> > The initial Board shall determine the voting criteria
> > for community members eligible to select subsequent Board Directors.
>
> If this is in the Bylaws, doesn't it allow each Board to select how
> the next Board is selected? Seems sloppy. Make it STV and counted like
> the Council. Similarly there should be clauses in the Bylaws about
> what happens if there aren't enough members to stand.
>
> It is meant that the Initial Board (the first Board) will decide how
members will select all Directors in the future.  For example, should we
keep the same karma calculation, and time and karma thresholds for being
eligible to vote for and to be a member of the Board?  I think we
should allow for the possibility to have someone from Nokia or Jolla be on
the Board even if they don't have 100 karma under current system.  Rather
than try to decide this in advance, the proposal is to select the very
first Board according to present criteria and then they can decide what
will work best after seeing how the organization shapes up.  I also worry
if there aren't enough members to stand, and especially qualified member to
stand. Maybe we should say "up to" 5.



> STV makes sense if people are running for a pool place, but should the
> Board have defined roles which are elected to?
>

We're trying not to make assumptions in case the NPE does not have the
infrastructure to do karma or STV.  If we want to have a President elected
specifically to that role, I don't see why not.  But I would like to keep
it flexible and not have multiple roles in case we have, for example, just
three people who agree to be on the Board.


>
> Cheers,
>
> Andrew
>
> PS. Are you sure "Hildon" isn't trademarked by Nokia?
>
I am sure it is not in the US.  Of course, we may not use Hildon at all in
the future.

Thanks for your comments.

Rob
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