Eight EU countries banned from using #Treefinder due to destructive immigration policy
Gangolf Jobb, author of Treefinder takes a stand against the suicidal immigration policy in Europe.
Treefinder is a computer program for the likelihood-based reconstruction of phylogenetic trees from molecular sequences. It was written by Gangolf Jobb, a former researcher at the Max-Planck-Institut for evolutionary anthropology in Leipzig and was originally released in 2004. Treefinder is free of charge, though the most recent license prohibits its use in many major western countries due to their destructive and genocidal immigration policy.
This is what #GangolfJobb had to say on his website:
License change in October 2015:
Starting from 1st October 2015, I do no longer permit the usage of my TREEFINDER software in the following EU countries: Germany, Austria, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark - the countries that together host most of the non-european immigrants. For all other countries, the old license agreement remains valid. USA has already been excluded from using Treefinder in February 2015. This is all in accordance with the license agreement stated in the TREEFINDER manual since the earliest versions, which reserves me the right to change the license agreement at any time. I can do this because Treefinder is my own property.
The reason: I am no longer willing to support with my work the political system in Europe and Germany, of which the science system is part. There is no genuine democracy, and I disagree with almost all of the policies. In particular, I disagree with immigration policy. 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. Immigration is the huge corporations' interest, not peoples' interest. I am not against helping refugees, but they would have to be kept strictly separated from us Europeans, for some limited time only until they return home, and not being integrated here as cheap workers and additional consumers. Immigration unnecessarily defers the collapse of capitalism, its final crisis. The earlier the system crashes, the more damage can be avoided. Possibly a civil war in Europe. Not to mention the loss of our European genetic and cultural heritage.
A very small elite of very rich people is trying to establish a new world order, and the scientific system is being misused to promote their goals. I am beeing oppressed and I cannot work as a scientist, because my traditional views and values conflict with that elite's doctrine. I am being oppressed, because I am not willing to migrate, not willing to serve. Because I insist to be free. Evil old men rule the world.
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Scientist says researchers in immigrant-friendly nations can't use his software
By Kai Kupferschmidt | sciencemag.org
A German scientist is revoking the license to his bioinformatics software for researchers working in eight European countries because those countries allow too many immigrants to cross their borders. From 1 October, scientists in Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Denmark—"the countries that together host most of the non-European immigrants“—won't be allowed to use a program called Treefinder, informatician Gangolf Jobb wrote in a statement he posted on his website.
Treefinder has been used in hundreds of scientific papers to build phylogenetic trees, diagrams showing the most likely evolutionary relationship of various species, from sequence data. 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. Some pointed to a list of possible alternatives online.
"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,” Jobb's statement reads. "Immigration unnecessarily defers the collapse of capitalism, its final crisis," the statement also reads.
Jobb had already excluded researchers in the United States from using the software in February. "I want to stress that this license change is not against my colleagues in the USA," he wrote at the time, "but against a small rich elite there that misuses the country's power to rule the world. The USA is our worst enemy.” In another part of the website, Jobb writes that "the scientific system is being misused to promote” the goals of a “small elite” and that "evil old men rule the world."
The 2004 paper describing Treefinder was written by Jobb and Korbinian Strimmer, a bioinformatician at Imperial College London who says he hasn't seen Jobb in 10 years. Jobb sent "grotesque emails with racist slogans" to professors in Germany in the past, Strimmer says. "His new diatribe against countries that host refugees is unbelievable.”
Strimmer says Jobb started a Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, under Arndt von Haeseler, now at the Center for Integrative Bioinformatics Vienna, who is also a co-author on the 2004 paper. Jobb later broke off his Ph.D., however, and joined Strimmer’s group for a year. “During that time I managed to persuade him to write the publication on Treefinder,” Strimmer says. It is not clear whether Jobb still has a job. (His website says that he “cannot work as a scientist, because my traditional views and values conflict with that elite’s doctrine.”)
Jobb initially declined to answer questions via email, referring to his website. But in an email sent after this article was first published, he said he was “no more ‘racist’ than most people in Europe” and that he wasn’t against saving refugees.
"I'd say not being able to use Treefinder would be no great loss to anyone,” says Sandra Baldauf, a biologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. A paper co-authored by Baldauf last year in Current Biology used Treefinder primarily because a colleague had long worked with it, she says; now that that researcher has left, Baldauf uses different software, she wrote in an email. And after reading Jobb's statement, "I would stop using [Treefinder] just on general principle, even if we had to resort to using pencil and paper.”
Another researcher, biologist Maria Nilsson-Janke at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt, Germany, says her team has been using the software and only became aware of the change in the license—and Jobb’s worldview—after an email from ScienceInsider. She and her team “started to look for replacements, and have already found suitable programs,”Nilsson-Janke says. "We will also reanalyze data sets that are in the pipeline to be published.”
The affair shows that it is important for scientists to be knowledgeable about licensing issues when using software, says Antoine Branca, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, who co-authored a Nature Communications paper last year that also relied on Treefinder. Because Jobb owns the licence, he can restrict it as he sees fit; licenses like the GNU General Public License, on the other hand, grant users rights to use, study, share, and even modify the software freely. "Maybe people will be more aware of this now,” Branca says.
Source: sciencemag.org
