Community Council/Council election May 2013/Candidate declarations

Contents

Candidates for May 2013 Maemo Community and Hildon Foundation Council elections

The following candidates intend to stand for election to both the Maemo Community Council and the Hildon Foundation Council (HFC).

  1. Rüdiger Schiller / chemist - karma checked
  2. Joerg Reisenweber / joerg_rw - karma checked
  3. Edoardo Spadolini / kerio - karma checked
    • khm - backed out
  4. Christian Ratzenhofer / merlin1991 - karma checked
  5. Michael Demetriou / qwazix - karma checked
  6. Paul Healy / sixwheeledbeast - karma checked
  7. Aakash Sadh / thedead1440 - karma checked

Election results

Candidate declarations

Rüdiger Schiller

From alpha testing to CSSU-maintainer - from brainstormer to talk-master - from community member to community council. I always intended to leave some footprints but I did not expect it to be so many - yet I am here. Speaking for the masses isn't exactly what I like to do but pulling strings and pushing buttons to have the audience enjoy the show without having to think about what happens in the background is what I do (for a living). Supporting our community up to its needs and giving a hand where it is needed I already do so why run for council? Probably because I have been asked for it. I might look sane and reliable, very strict and cynic - with Cpt. Obvious sitting on one shoulder and BOFH on the other. I know I can give people a hard time but I would not stand where I am now "who I am now" without it. Being with Maemo for years, connecting with people AFK makes me want to keep it alive. Getting us to the next level is what's to come, for sure you want some badass people in council to push things in the needed direction. There you might need me to start discussions and point at the Captain - speaking in terms of Sailfish - I am a good navigator, even helmsman at times! Where do you like sailing to?

Joerg Reisenweber

I'm sorry to set a bad example here but I'm very busy with managing this elections and the maemo infra and so (for now) just say: I will continue exactly like I did during Current Term: October 2012 - May 2013. I hope to augment this statement to the required minimum for a decent election application statement as soon as possible.

First preliminary statements: I mainly feel I need to run for next MC/HFC to finally establish the HFC as the mandatory part of a functioning legit HiFo that it always been, to eventually (soon) unify or rather merge HFC into MCC according to the explicit wish of vast majority of community, as well as - since I feel there's been a lot of misconceptions - to finally augment/refine/clarify the definition of what HFC and HiFo are meant to be and do, along the basic priciple which always been my primary guide for understanding of all maemo orga:

[boss] The Maemo Community
[proxy of boss] Maemo Community Council
[treasurer of maemo community] Hildon Foundation
those 3 simple lines describe it all, and their adjustment is not arbitrary but shows the "chain of command" or hierarchy if there's any such thing. Maybe "dependencies" is the better word. This doesn't mean that Community or MCC could give orders to HiFo that are not in line with what HiFo is supposed to take responsibility for and actually legally is responsible (like: "sell the maemo.org domain to Samsung", HiFo must not do this according to bylaws, so any such request from council to HiFo was illegitimate and moot. Sorry for poor example, I couldn't think of a better one. OK now here's a better one: not even the boss and for sure not proxy of boss could go to treasurer of a company and ask for 10k bucks and just get them. However boss can fire treasurer), but it clearly gives a better idea of any "mission" of council as well as HiFo. It also gives an idea of domains of responsibility assigned to each entity.

I have to admit it took several months until I fully understood this principle, and at start of currently ending term I had no idea of what's the (intended, logical) relation between HiFo and council. Meanwhile I think this concept is the only one that makes sense and can work in a sustainable way.

Maybe a few trivia: I came to linux phones 2008 via Openmoko Neo 1973 / Freerunnersince I felt it would be nice to tweak stuff in UI of my phone that I don't like the way the firmware it's shipped with is doing it - I had a Nokia 6210. I'm an Electronics Engineer (EE/CE) with quite a few years of experience (as you can tell by me using the term "EE/CE" above) and so it happened that my involvement got me a job at Openmoko as Senior EE. At about same time I got me a N810 and used it for more than 4h per day for IRC via xchat. When I heard about N900 I sure enough been one of the first to preorder. Interest in USB and particularly hostmode there made me join IRC channel #maemo and resulted in H-E-N and matching kernel. You can find me on IRC(freenode) 24/7 as DocScrutinizer[0-9]*. During this ending term I not only been a member of maemo community council but also tried to manage/coordinate the community owned maemo.org infra and maintainers/sysops. During last 2 years my professional focus been on developing LTE modem chips and maintaining the according on-chip firmware, and consulting companies who use those chips in their smartphone products. A stroke of good fortune for maemo been that I quit that job 3 months ago and thus have more time for council and infra administration. Of course this might change quickly when I find a new job that matches my interests and qualifications. But no matter where I might move to, the nice thing in maemo devices is that you can use them to maintain them, anywhere in the world. So you'll find me on IRC for the next few years no matter what ;-).

Edoardo Spadolini

I intend to do what I can to help Maemo and the Maemo community to continue to exist and prosper, and I'm interested in getting HiFo to actually do what it's supposed to do, rather than discuss meaningless legal minutia.

Christian Ratzenhofer

I plan on keeping Maemo alive, my main interest lies in keeping the ongoing maintenance of the maemo.org infrastructure alive and reducing the friction with the Hildon Foundation to a minimum. The heated debates on tmo and other mediums between various members of the community could benefit from a new calm voice, that didn't participate yet. I'd like to inject a bit of community sense into the discussion/proceedings, which to me seem to run around silly points quite often, where only a small portion of the participants is actually arguing based on what's good for the community.

Michael Demetriou

I am honoured to be nominated for the Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council and I accept the nomination.

The reason that I do accept despite that I have recently said otherwise is because I feel that a vote with many candidates is needed to provide legitimacy to the elected council to take the actions required.

My goal for the next term is to minimize the needless bureaucracy that has made our life difficult the last few months and part of this effort is the combination of the two bodies MCC/HFC into one, as I firmly believe there is no need for two different councils. I will appreciate if you show everybody that this is the community's will by voting identically for both bodies.

Lastly I'd like to point out clearly that I don't believe there is an old school maemo camp nor a harmattan camp here, and I have tried to prove this by sharing my development efforts almost equally to both platforms. There are fremantle users and harmattan users and I am proudly both.

More than anything, I believe I speak on behalf of every candidate, WE WANT YOU TO VOTE regardless of who you're voting for.

Paul Healy

I first joined TMO back in April 2010, when I got my first N900. While hiding in the shadows, I was yet to find out how the N900 and our community would soon become a daily part of my life.

I owe a lot to this community, prior to 2010 I had never touched a Linux OS. Since then I have migrated from Windows to Ubuntu. Installed scratchbox on a Debian VM and built simple applications in Qt. (Flopswap) being the most notable) I now have three N900's and when I get chance try use them to test applications and package rate as much as possible.

However the majority of my time spent about the community is helping others. This maybe helping fellow members on TMO and more recently IRC, package rating, package testing (Testing Squad), updating and cleaning up wiki pages.

Considering the low number of candidates we had last year I decided I couldn't standby and watch. I have chosen to run for the community mainly because I wish for it to live on. We all put effort in to this community and have a lot to lose if it vanished. Therefore my main interest is supporting the ongoing maintenance of the maemo.org infrastructure. This after all is the main reason we are all here.

Aakash Sadh

I joined this community via TMO in November 2011 when I got my N9 and similar to Paul, this community changed my view on a number of aspects such as understanding what F/OSS really is and about the community spirit that exists throughout.

While I've always refused to consider standing for an election, this time I felt it necessary to stand as I want to ensure that this fantastic Community doesn't dissipate away due to some legalese matters caused by over-complication of really simple matters.

Hence my main purpose for standing for Coucil is to ensure the Community's voice is heard and to do my best to ensure the will of the Community-at-large is carried out.

Questions candidates might like to answer

what is your vision for Maemo community

  • in the coming six months ("your" term)
  • in the next two years