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Treefinder Revokes Software License For Users In Immigrant-Friendly Nations
dotancohen writes: The author of bioinformatics software Treefinder is revoking the license to his software for researchers working in eight European countries because he says those countries allow too many immigrants to cross their borders, effective 1 October. The author states, "Immigration to my country harms me, it harms my family, it harms my people. Whoever invites or welcomes immigrants to Europe and Germany is my enemy."
Too few people nowadays (and politicians en masse) are willing to speak from a core belief set for fear of {horrors} offending someone!
Even ridiculous courage is refreshing these days.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Basically he's still under the same mistaken ideals about economics as the Founding Fathers.
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I'm not sure that's possible. Can you revoke a licence of an old program? You can change the licence for a new version, sure, but when I buy (or download) a program, the licence that comes with it *at that time* is the licence I have to adhere to I would think.
From the manual:
"By default, TREEFINDER displays a license notice every time the program is launched.
Clicking the I-agree-button all the time might get on one's nerves after a while, so here is the
trick how to switch it off: using a text editor to create a file containing the words 'I promise
that I will always respect the current license conditions.' and save it in your 'Treefinder'
directory as 'i_agree' (without a file extension!). You will never see the license notice again."
and:
"This license agreement is valid until the next software release. Afterwards, the license of the
latest TREEFINDER version applies."
So it looks like he was already a control freak back in 2011, and was attempting to reserve the right to impose retrospectively whatever licence he felt like issuing in the future. I suspect this wouldn't stand up to serious legal scrutiny, but it was already a big red flag before he went off the rails completely.
[citation needed]
I never heard anything about that Octoberfest story from any serious sources.
bickerdyke
Information is not racist in itself. If it turns out that gene research shows that some types of people are more intelligent or more creative than others, so what? Should we censor that? Heck, even people WITHIN a particular culture tend to be more intelligent, faster or stronger than others within that culture. That's not under doubt, but it's how we can act on that information that determines whether it's racist or not.
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The immigrants themselves did, by (literally!) voting with their feet. After all, they could have headed in any direction -- the Caucasus countries, Iran (and points east), the Arabian peninsula, Africa -- but they picked Europe.
There's little ethical difference between immigrants trying to import their culture and imperialists trying to export theirs. If you think the latter is wrong, then you should logically think the former is wrong too. The right of the newcomers not to have the existing culture forced upon them is trumped by the right of the existing people's right not to have their culture supplanted by the newcomers.
That said, I'm not at all convinced that (a) there are too many refugees to be assimilated or (b) that "but they might not assimilate" is a valid reason for refusing to accept refugees in the first place.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No they aren't. "Native American" doesn't have the same meaning as adding the individual meanings of "Native" and "American".
In any case, I guess it's too late and we're stuck with you. We should have sent your ancestors back to Poland, Ireland or wherever as soon as the bastards landed.
P.S. How many Syrians do you think we should take?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."