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Treefinder Revokes Software License For Users In Immigrant-Friendly Nations

Posted by Soulskill on from the everyone-welcome-except-the-people-who-are-unwelcome dept.

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."

45 of 578 comments (clear)

  1. What a dork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What a dork

  2. Oh, that's ironic by PvtVoid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Racist gene sequencing software.

    1. Re:Oh, that's ironic by ultranova · · Score: 5, Insightful

      75% of these so-called refugees are military age men.

      Thus giving them a particularly pressing reason to escape before one warlord or another drafts them. Or do you perhaps think ISIS/Boko Haram/whatever are staffed entirely with volunteers?

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    2. Re:Oh, that's ironic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      The petition to cancel Oktoberfest is a fake created by someone attempting to aggravate tensions against the refugees which gathered far more attention than it deserves.

    3. Re:Oh, that's ironic by bickerdyke · · Score: 3, Interesting

      [citation needed]

      I never heard anything about that Octoberfest story from any serious sources.

      --
      bickerdyke
    4. Re:Oh, that's ironic by Twinbee · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
    5. Re:Oh, that's ironic by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      75% of these so-called refugees are military age men.

      I'll bet about 75% of Slashdot readers are military age men.

      Makes you think.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    6. Re:Oh, that's ironic by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sources, you racist idiot?

      There will be crimes and misconduct among refugees for sure. That is a statistical certainty when you have hundreds of thousands of people. But considering the hardships and unimaginable emotional stress that refugees have had to endure, I would say the vast majority of them are remarkably peaceful and calm.

      Almost haf of Syrian refugees have high school or university education. Also the vast majority of them are not interested at all in fundamentalist Islam, but are progressive and simply want to lead a free life of opportunity, like the rest of us. That's why they are coming to Europe. If they agreed with fanatics like ISIS they would join them and not walk over to the "enemy".

      The problem of morons like you is that for you every muslim is a fanatic, because all you hear in the news are associations of terrorism with Islam. In reality, the majority of muslims are normal people like you and me that want to live and let live. The Islamists are a much bigger threat and pain in the ass to them than they are for us, because they are the ones being killed and driven from their homes.

    7. Re:Oh, that's ironic by afidel · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, only 21.8% of the refuges are fighting age men. Try again you racist troll.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    8. Re:Oh, that's ironic by sunderland56 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Only a complete fucking moron would think that this mass immigration is anything but a future crime and terrorist attack in the making.

      Yep, mass immigration - that's what America is founded on. And look how it turned out.

    9. Re:Oh, that's ironic by Cederic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sources, you racist idiot?

      I'm curious, what did the AC say that's racist or that suggests that they are?

      Stop throwing around emotionally loaded terms to try and avoid debating real issues.

    10. Re:Oh, that's ironic by Aaron+B+Lingwood · · Score: 3, Informative

      The second hit is a piece in the Wall Street Journal.

      The piece mentions nothing of immigrants, Muslims, or anyone else filing a petition or calling for a ban.
      It does mention that Christian Conservatives want to exclude all immigrants from festivities and Bavaria in general.

      Having read ALL the first 20 links, it appears that the petition to ban Oktoberfest was submitted by the same Christian Conservatives and that all names and signatures were fraudulent. But I guess since these fraudsters aren't brown, we can now pretend the petition never happened.

      --
      [Rent This Space]
    11. Re:Oh, that's ironic by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You do realize that every person born on American soil is JUST as much a native as you are, right?

      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."
  3. Who cares by war4peace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From TFA it looks like Jobb is a racist asshole and his Treefinder software is outdated and has plenty alternatives.
    Looks like a drama queen thing.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    1. Re:Who cares by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He might be an asshole, but I'm not surprised to see reactions like these to the immigrant crisis. I see them more and more often around me as well (I am from Europe). And it might get a lot worse, already we're seeing arson and threats of violence against refugee centers.

      The reason is simple: the fears and objections of Europe's citizens have been completely ignored. If a refugee center opens up in your neighborhood, you will experience an increase in crime and nuisance. The people in a village with 500 inhabitants fear the influence that a nearby center for 6000 refugees will have on their community. And a sizable portion aren't refugees or even from Syria; they left their own save homes to find a better life, and look for countries with generous welfare packages. In the Netherlands, the refugees already have had a serious impact on housing. Municipalities are obliged to give priority to people with an asylum status, which means they jump to the front of the queue for social housing. The waiting time for a regular family without priority is now 7-8 years I believe, with some larger cities having a waiting list of 14 years.

      Some of the fears are unfounded and the objections unreasonable, and the harsh reality may be that we will have no choice but to put these migrants up somehow, somewhere. But the problem is that in the political climate it is impossible to even begin that discussion To ask what the cost of this immigration is, what the impact is, to question the motives of some of the immigrants, to demand that we finally get some sensible and well organized way of dealing with the immigrants instead of pancking at the last minute and putting them up in tents, or to demand that along with a generous welcome for the true refugees comes a program to actively screen and evict people who have no business here and to deter them from coming in the first place. Those questions get you branded as an unfeeling nazi, a racist, or worse. This discussion is carefully avoided by politicians and the media alike. Instead, we hear only the good news: these immigrants bring important skills, they bring wealth instead of costs, they will not alter our society for the worse, they are not terrorists, and they will generate jobs for us too. Meanwhile the actual problems are unacknowledged and thus not addressed.

      An increasing number of people are starting to feel the pressure from increased immigration firsthand, and they are completely abandonded by their representatives. Immigration in the face of an emergency doesn't have to be a problem for the locals: when the government organize things well, are open and honest about what is going to happen, do what they can to alleviate any nuisances, and take complaints seriously, then you see the locals putting up with any troubles that remain. If however you ignore valid complaints, and brand any naysayer as sub-human white trash, then desperate people will lash out. In increasingly violent ways. And they will lash out against the refugees as well, which is the last thing they need.

      That is my main worry. Not the immigration itself, but the unbelievable way that my government and Europe are handling this, or rather: not handling it.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    2. Re:Who cares by orzetto · · Score: 4, Informative

      I worked for a few years at a Max Planck Institute (not the same one as Jobb), and I remember he sent occasionally racist rants to all email recipients in all institutes, in which he lamented that the foreigners were taking his job. The rants were so logically inconsistent they looked like a crossing of Time Cube and the Unabomber Manifesto.

      More than racist, which he is, the guy is psychologically unstable; the archetypal mad scientist.

      --
      Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
    3. Re:Who cares by dave420 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The fears and objections have been largely ignored for both those wanting to accept refugees and those not. A refugee centre opened up in my neighbourhood (our city of ~275k has about 6 the last I heard) and nothing happened. Sure, you see a few people walking around, but that's it. No crime wave. No disturbances. You might want to demote your "will" to "might", as clearly it's not a certainty.

      Claiming economic migrants just want good benefits is a disgrace, as you are attempting to cast them all as acting in poor faith. Most want to work, just as most people who are born in Europe want to work. Some will want to sponge off and do nothing, just as some Europeans do. Generalising so much about a group of people you clearly don't know much about is pretty much the definition of a xenophobe.

      I think it's perfectly suitable to brand someone making horrible, vague statements about foreigners as a xenophobic muppet, as that's what they are.

    4. Re:Who cares by gay358 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not only the housing but costs for providing social security is unsustainable with the current flow of asylum seekers. It doesn't take more just few years and even 100 % taxation wouldn't be enough to provide social security for these asylum seekers. Although some of the asylum seekers may be able to find jobs, the traditional levels of employment have been very low for many of these groups (for example, the biggest asylum seeker groups in Finland are Iraqis and Somalis and even during better economic times, they have had about 15 % employment (not unemployment) rate).

      And within surprisingly short time, the local population would become minority, unless the social security system collapses before that and the flood of asylum seekers stops. And if history tells something, it quite often means very bad times for the original population (e.g. Palestinians, Indians, Aboriginals etc).

      I am afraid that if it this flood is not stopped in one way or another soon, there will chaos or even wars in large parts of Europe.

    5. Re:Who cares by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Informative

      I mentioned this as a fear rather than fact, but yes, there are crime statistics for many neighborhoods where a refugee center was opened. Some neighborhoods experienced a statistically significant increase in crime and reported nuisances that coincided with the opening of the center. In other neighborhoods there was no measurable effect or even a subjective effect: citizens who were at first concerned about the refugee center reported that they did not feel more unsafe once the center had been there for a while. So it is clear that a refugee center has a detrimental effect of safety in some cases, but not all. It is not clear what the mitigating factors are, unfortunately, though overcrowding or having plenty of things to do during the day have some influence.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    6. Re:Who cares by kqs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      He might be an asshole, but I'm not surprised to see reactions like these to the immigrant crisis. I see them more and more often around me as well (I am from Europe). And it might get a lot worse, already we're seeing arson and threats of violence against refugee centers.

      The reason is simple: the fears and objections of Europe's citizens have been completely ignored.

      Because clearly, if you feel the government isn't listening to you, arson and violence is a valid response.

      I'm a big fan of civil disobedience when you feel your rights are being trampled, but in that case you should protest against the government, preferably by voting but if that fails then protests, work stoppages, etc seem a valid thing. Violence against immigrants don't show patriotism, it shows small-minded fear and hatred.

      Here in the US we also have a "yooge" anti-immigrant movement. As far as I can tell, most people wish the US had closed its borders the day after *their* immigrant ancestors arrived here.

    7. Re:Who cares by meta-monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

      He's not defending arsonists and violent people, he's stating the fact that people will do it when they're not heard.

      You know this is true. This is how people explain riots in Baltimore. A group of people feels powerless, and eventually something boils over and they lash out. Whether this group of people is not heard about their objection to millions of unasked for new neighbors or police brutality, the result is the same.

      The answer is not to suppress or ignore these people, but to address their fears and concerns. But just scorn them as racists or xenophobes and dismiss them, and eventually, yes, the more incensed and morally questionable members of that camp will do bad things.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  4. Hmmm ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Informative

    So basically he's a batshit crazy idiot who is ranting publicly and acting like a whiny bitch?

    Congratulations, Gangolf Judd ... you're an idiot, and a moron.

    Although the change in the license may be a nuisance for some researchers, the program is far from irreplaceable, several scientists tell ScienceInsider. Treefinder had not been updated for several years and it was mostly used by researchers who had grown used to it, they say.

    And largely irrelevant, from reading this.

    Strimmer says. It is not clear whether Jobb still has a job. (His website says that he âoecannot work as a scientist, because my traditional views and values conflict with that eliteâ(TM)s doctrine.â)

    Everything about this article suggests some raving idiot sitting in the dark lamenting how the world won't adhere to his bullshit beliefs.

    Whatever, and nothing of value was lost.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Hmmm ... by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Basically he's still under the same mistaken ideals about economics as the Founding Fathers.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    2. Re:Hmmm ... by TheSunborn · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nope. To quote from his statement:

      "Immigration unnecessarily defers the collapse of capitalism, its final crisis,"

      So he sounds more like a communist or anarchist.

    3. Re:Hmmm ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why not try to analyze whether his statements have some merit, rather than just fuel the culture of outrage?

      Because I don't give a fuck about some guy who wrote a piece of software, and his personal manifesto. I don't need to validate his position, or evaluate it for merit -- that's not my problem.

      See, I'm not committing a logical fallacy, since I'm not refuting his points ... I am dismissing him out of hand as an irrelevant, whiny little twat who wants to take his ball and go home. He's more than welcome to do that. He can do it for any stupid reason he chooses.

      And the rest of the world is free to dismiss him as a crackpot and not give a damn about his crazy rantings.

      The reality is, he isn't withholding anything nobody can't live without, and while he's free to do as he chooses with his software ... everyone else is free to not give a fuck.

      We certainly don't need to acknowledge, validate, or give credibility to his temper tantrum. That's his damned problem.

      If someone said tomorrow I can't use a piece of software because I'm not a Christian, I'm also going to conclude that person is a moron and an asshole, and be equally dismissive of them. But I'm not going to coddle or validate his feelings because he needs to act like a moron and an asshole.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  5. The edge of reality by AndyKron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Somebody has fallen off the edge of reality.

  6. Now we see what copyright run amok hath wrought! by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Granted, chances are the guy doesn't actually have the right to cancel people's purchases like this. However, the fact that it's halfway-reasonable for him to think he has that right is yet another illustration of how ridiculously overreaching copyright has become.

    Again and again, we're seeing a thing that is (a) a government-granted monopoly, not a right, (b) only supposed to be temporary, and (c) not designed for the benefit of the author, but rather for the benefit of society, perverted to the point where people think it trumps actual property rights!

    This guy's attitude is fucking sick and disgusting, and that's before I even take the bigotry into account!

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  7. Re:Who gives a shit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the West had not destabilized the whole regionfor political ends, we would not be in this mess.

  8. Everybody has to believe in something by rmdingler · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  9. quoting the man by fche · · Score: 3, Informative

    "I have not yet been rewarded for my work.
    I think we need a completely different political system.
    Nobody should depend on employers and landlords.
    Nobody should be profitable for someone rich.
    Nobody should have to pay rent, have to migrate.
    Most of all, we must limit private property.
    We must expropriate the rich.
    Free land for all!"

  10. Blindness by nitehawk214 · · Score: 3, Funny

    He can't see the forest despite the treefinder.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  11. Re:Is that even possible? by RDW · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  12. Re:Mainstream media is covering up the crisis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The part about Sweden is a theoretical possibility, in that somebody managed to dig up an old law, and not even about homes.

    The German one is about a woman who rented an apartment in a building, and the land lord has decided to stop renting out apartments, and sell the whole building. She has been given over half a years notice, apparently more than German law requires.

    The headline is just right wing extremist propaganda.

  13. The guy is desparate - mainstream media are biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The guy is simply desperate to get some attention.

    I live in the EU and the mainstream media are totally biased pro-immigrant. Comments on the immigrant issues are usually turned offed, polls are not published, articles are 100% immigrant-friendly.

    If you do not follow this pattern - you are racist , xenophob etc.

    However if you talk to people - people are 80% anti-immigrant.

    We do believe we should help the poor people but the help should go to camps in LIban, Turkey, Jordania, to women and children who are there, not to young fit guys coming here. We should also increase military help to stabilize situation in Syria.

    The number of immigrants coming is way over the assimilation ability of Germany and other popular countries.

  14. Re:Who gives a shit? by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But of course! Before the West got involved in the Middle East, it was a peaceful paradise, where unicorns grazed under rainbows, and peoples of all different religions lived together in blissful harmony! It's not like these people ever occupied large parts of Europe, oppressed non-Muslims, or abducted millions of Europeans into slavery, oh no, nothing like that ever happened!

  15. How racism? by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nationalism, yes.

    But wanting to stop the flow if illegal immigrants is not racism, because you don't care what color they are - just that people should immigrate legally, so that they can come in at a rate that they can mesh well with existing society.

    That is merely realizing that a national identity has value, and is worth protecting...

    Mind you, I disagree with how they are trying to protect against immigration - what if some of the people they have blocked are supporters of their cause? Perhaps instead they should demand public statements on websites of the companies denouncing illegal immigration.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:How racism? by dave420 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He didn't mention anything about them being legal or illegal, just that "migrants are bad" for Germany, even though every single study on the issue shows quite the opposite. So yeah, he's a nationalist, xenophobic, ignorant muppet who would rather put hundreds of thousands of people in dangerous circumstances before looking past his own nose.

    2. Re:How racism? by Falconhell · · Score: 4, Insightful

      National identity is the kind of thing that stuffs the world up.
      I can't understand those that feel proud of a geographical area they happen to live in, especially when they simultaneously destroy the environment that makes any place great to be.
      The concept of patriotism is in my opinion, absurd.

    3. Re:How racism? by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I can't understand those that feel proud of a geographical area they happen to live in

      Really? That's quite sad you grew up in some kind of dictatorship shithole; but that's not true of everyone.

      I'm pretty proud of free speech, the ability for women to drive and vote (or even voting in general), and that people can marry whoever they like.

      All of those things are going to go away with a large enough migration from a people who support none of them.

      The future belongs to the people who show up, the future doesn't care who that it but you might even if you don't realize it yet.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    4. Re:How racism? by thoromyr · · Score: 4, Informative

      And, interestingly enough, nationalism is a recent invention. We are taught that there are distinct countries and the implication is that this has always been the case. If nothing else, people are either told or simply assume that before nations there were tribes and that tribalism preceded nationalism. But it isn't true.

      There is a related problem, that of language. We like to pretend that languages are distinct and have clear boundaries. Someone speaks English, or German or Spanish or... But this notion of language is fairly modern and isn't even true. This is tacitly acknowledged by adding labels to indicate region, recognizing that American English is not the same as British English. Nor is the English spoken in India the same as either of those. Egyptian Arabic is a mix of Arabic and British English with some older Egyptian vocabulary thrown in.

      Being a dead language, Latin was fairly defined as a language circa 800 AD, but the people inhabiting what we now call France did not refer to themselves as French, German or in fact any national or tribal identity. The term "the Franks" is more modern than anything else. Historically membership in a tribe was a hand wavy group identification, not about ethnicity or heredity. If you asked a Frank about his identity as a Frank you would have confused him. If you asked him what language he spoke it would similarly have confused him.

      Linguists have labels for dead "languages" but the truth is there is no hard definition for what such a language was or who spoke it. If you started on the west coast and traveled east the spoken language would shift from place to place with generally increasing differences. The closest you get is a sort of civic identity where someone felt attachment to the city of his birth, but it is reading too much into it to regard it as a precursor to nationalism.

      When King Harald set out to unite Norway there was no strict geographical boundary. People who lived in what we now call Norway didn't identify themselves as "Norwegians". They lived in familial groups, households, and identified with their relatives though certainly not in a tribal sense. Individuals who didn't like King Harald's requirement for land ownership left, mostly for Iceland, where family continued to be the most significant group identity and there was certainly no national identity.

      No, nationalism was consciously invented as a tool to rally the mass of people behind a political figure or organization. Nationalism, and its sister patriotism, are tools to control a population. It is nationalism that encourages xenophobia. Despite a popular modern conception that primitive peoples were distrustful of outsiders, by and large what we have observed is the opposite. At least, those groups that survived with a primitive lifestyle to more modern times have failed to be adequately suspicious of foreign intruders.

      It is modern nationalism, not primitive tribalism, that leads to xenophobia.

  16. he probably deals a lot with end users by Thud457 · · Score: 3, Funny

    huh, a software developer that's a unstable nutbag. There's something you don't see every day.

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  17. Re:Who gives a shit? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Informative

    "If the West had not propped up tyrants for economic ends, we would not be in this mess."

    No, the present mess began when we deposed the secular tyrants.

  18. Re:Who gives a shit? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "But Christianity had a 500 year head start on Islam'

    Yes, Christianity was this bad once. Today we call that time the Dark Ages.

  19. But it is legal by tepples · · Score: 5, Insightful

    just that people should immigrate legally, so that they can come in at a rate that they can mesh well with existing society.

    Say the body responsible for setting a nation's immigration policy has decided to admit refugees on the basis that emergency evacuation from a war zone outweighs the difficulty of "mesh[ing] well with existing society". In that case, they are immigrating legally.

  20. Re:The guy is desparate - mainstream media are bia by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Assimilation is racist and culturalist. Who is to say that Western culture is better than non-Western culture, and force it on immigrants?

    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