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."

Comments

Everybody has to believe in something

[rmdingler]

I harbor a bit of empathy for anyone willing to put personal beliefs on the line for principle.

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.

Re:Is that even possible?

[RDW]

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.

Re:Oh, that's ironic

[Twinbee]

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.