What follows is a description of the past that has quite some incorrect points in it, thus transporting a distorted idea of what things were like, what happend, and how situation is now.
Let me comment on the points I think need clarification, and mention my concerns towards the end of this post.
The council's tasks/responsibilities were broader than just that.
Nokia only owned Nokia proprietary stuff. Most of maemo is FOSS
I didn't see Nokia dictating stuff.
Of course they could be held responsible for e.g. mp3 or other royalty/patent-encumbered software getting published on maemo repos, for any illegal posts or links on planet.m.o and probably even on talk.m.o though that actually never been owned by Nokia.
Please read http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council#Council_work
Actually all this changed when Nokia tranferred maemo management and responsibility to community and council, which been long before invention of HiFo and even before Nokia mentioned publicly that they gonna abandon maemo.
As I remember it, it been Nokia who asked for community offering an entity that Nokia could transfer maemo legal ownership to. It actually been Nokia who was interested in transferring maemo to community completely (partially it been done almost years before, as mentioned above), not "Few worthy members of the community managed to negotiate with Nokia"
so far correct
Operation of the servers been in councl's responsibility already since ages, guess why http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council#Council_work says "[Council has the responsibility/power for] Hiring of maemo.org staff" (which were the guys of Nemein and other community members doing professional work on server administartion and maintenance in cooperation with Council, _not_ Nokia employees)
there's no software formerly owned by Nokia that gets/got transferred to HiFo or anybody else and is used to run maemo.org (except of a few shell scripts which don't have any copyright in them and are made by nemein and supposed to be public domain)
[edit] see "svn checkout https://vcs.maemo.org/svn/maemo2midgard" - and the few scripts actually been already redone by new maemo techstaff and volunteers, since they introduced memleaks, so when anybody owns (C) in them then that's the community, not Nokia. Also see http://wstaw.org/m/2014/09/24/plasma-desktopvP1979.png on every maemo.org page. Some (ex) in HiFo don't get tired of claiming they inherited (or will inherit) more than just the hw, rights in 'maemo'[TradeMark] and maemo.org (the URL/DNS/domain) from Nokia by signing any NDA'ed contracts, however they regularly fail to quote what exactly this "Software owned by Nokia" might be, they can't name any. So any such claims have to be assumed as incorrect, probably propagated by Nokia to HiFo who taken them without actually checking.
Nokia didn't think of any governance this entity shall do to maemo community. Actually nobody governs the maemo community, it's self-governed and council is the administrative entity appointed to organize this self governance.
Well, the operating costs seem to be not much different to anywhere else on this world
which probably is exactly the reason why HiFo cannot legally transfer funds and assets to an entity that isn't adhering to the same bylaws (at least to the effect, if not to the word)
That's a minor convenience thing, basically only relevant for money transfers and the fees banks charge for them.
Basically mainly because a German e.V. has not the rigid laws you mentioned above, so friction on that entity's self-organization been considered possibly lower for an e.V than for a US chapter 504(?)xy company, and because American banks suck.
yes, it can. Exactly like HiFo did.
Hardly, see next few comments
So what? It doesn't need to be.
Exactly, and that's the way whole community and even Nokia agreed upon, voted on it in three referenda, and had a paragraph in the defining rules that those rules themselves cannot get altered except by a referendum of electorate as defined in those rules.
Why should it, despite it actually _is_ _exactly_ "a group of real people". It's not a legal person or entity but: see above and below.
Well, that's exactly how community and Nokia agreed upon and decided it to be like that. In a sense of welcoming everybody who's interested in participation. However note that for any position in maemo orga it's usually been required that the real identity gets disclosed and checked, since council of course is liable for doing mess to the server they are maintaining (and did since Nokia transferred maemo to community, something that happened long ago already, as mentioned above). Actually you could think of council as the IT-manager of a company (HiFo) that owns the whole thing. While legally the boss (HiFo) may do all and is in command over the employees, it's the employees that are supposed to do the work and suggest reasonable actions to higher level authorities (the boss). In a sane company the boss is usally supposed to follow any such suggestions, unless the boss knows stuff the employees are not aware of or missed out on considering.
Maemo techstaff is the sysops and workers, IT-manager (council) is their direct boss, usually they don't even ever meet the owner of the company (HiFo)
Oh, and on a sidenote, even company CEO (the owner/HiFo) can get legally sued when they do utterly bad management that does harm to the complete company, at least when the company actually is a holding and real owners is a huge group of people holding shares in that company.
Who defined including whole maemo garage electorate as being mandatory? It not been like this with HiFo, why would it be needed for e.V. ? Hifo agreed with council on this "company model" as of last section, and accepted that usually it's council that suggests what to do and HiFo has no power over council and community and usually is supposed to execute what THE COMMUNITY (represented by council) asks for (unless illegal). Why does any e.V need to abolish that and instead have an unelected group of privileged members called GA, appointed (or rejected!!!) by some unelected self-appointed entity inside the e.V. which are deciding instead of THE MAEMO COMMUNITY? I don't see why any e.V cannot act exactly like the HiFo concept we publicly discussed and agreed upon. You need a GA? fine! have a 6 members that are authorized by elections forming that GA, and make them promise to always listen to THE MAEMO COMMUNITY and not start own activity abusing their privileged position. after all they are supposed to be members of the community and not elected to be the (lifetime) emperors of (the huge discriminated rest of) community.[edited formatting due to obviously it's not recognized as constructive suggestion how to put the whole thing onto rails again]
This is where discrimination and abolishing/killing of the original maemo community starts

This would only be true when e.V would disregard/deny any existing established responsibilities of council, as been agreed upon first with Nokia and then with (the initial) HiFo.

Originally Posted by juiceme

The Maemo Council would be a voice of "The people that are mildly intrested in Maemo but not enough to be members".

Damage/killing of maemo community continued...

Originally Posted by juiceme

In this scenario the Council would behave towards Maemo e.V. like it used to when Nokia was still owner of Maemo.

actually not, see above. This conception of the relationship between council, Nokia and techstaff is incorrect and flawed

Originally Posted by juiceme

2.) The Maemo Council election rules are changed so that the electorate is members of Maemo e.V.
The Maemo Council would operate inside Maemo e.V. and have real power and responsibility to act.

Damage/killing of maemo community continued... This time even by redefining the council.

Originally Posted by juiceme

3.) The Maemo Council is disbanded as unnecessary element in the current state of affairs.

indeed it is, when you want to turn a FOSS community of (depending on the way you count) ~6000 to ~100,000 members into a "community" of a few dozen appointed by a governing entity (=board **) ), paying membership fees, not concerned about their anonymity, possibly European *) members of a club. All the existing (council) rules and (HiFo) bylaws don't allow this, however win7mac frankly confessed that's his plan now: "That never was the plan, but it turns out partially that's a requirement for an eV indeed". (which is an unbacked requirement made up by him to drive this "improvemet of democracy")
*) [edit] emphasized since otherwise it seems it will get answered by a "we don't see those problems, we welcome everybody in GA", or by making up some allegedly existing German laws.
**) "Board which is 3 people (currently Chair and 2 Vice) accepting applications" (or rejecting, no matter of any "why should we do this")

Because of my concerns regarding all this, I decided to clearly state that I disagree on the whole idea of transforming community into a club, and due to legal concerns of this thing getting forwarded nevertheless while people rise a shitstorm against me for pointing at the problems, I will not contribute and participate any further. What happens from now on is not in my responsibility any more, it's up to the rest of actors to cope with the possible consequences from death of maemo community to legal lawsuits that anybody might start against HiFo (of which council is a sub-entity as well. and thus shares responisbility for any actions HiFo takes)

BR
Bye maemo
jOERG
(a last time with councilor signature, though as a sort of minority report since other council members like to disagree on most of my concerns)
PS: I also won't answer any comments on this post. No matter if they are the ususal polemic flaming with severe ADHS or any unusual reasonable contribution. My particular thanks to wicket for summing up all the concerns I share, in a concise manner.
PPS: in following post http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1440274 literally every single word except "exactly" and maybe (dunno what he can find) ""I cant find one single statement in above" is incorrect and conceived as bashing on my side. That's why I had to leave. That and the "personal culpability for intentionally doing things harmful" which Woody thankfully confirmed actually exists and which I am not willing to take anymore (being part of the gang and not acting against some acton means participating in said action), and which Niel mentioned as his reason for leaving as well after I explained the issue in a mail to council..