Ball taken, gone back to Heimatland

September 30, 2015 5:40 PM

"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,” says bioinformatician Gangolf Jobb, who has responded to the Syrian migrant crisis by revoking the license for his Treefinder software, one tool (among many) that help measure and visualize the evolutionary distances between organisms.

Via Science: ``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.''

posted by a lungful of dragon (52 comments total)

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."

Eccentric scientist or unfolding psychotic episode?
posted by mr_roboto at 5:44 PM on September 30, 2015 [22 favorites]

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

Oh, one of these.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:45 PM on September 30, 2015 [17 favorites]

Not to mention the loss of our European genetic and cultural heritage.

This guy needs to have his degree revoked and forced to pay back every public cent he's ever benefitted from.
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:45 PM on September 30, 2015 [24 favorites]

Horrible, but kind of a fascinating case. You think you know where the guy's coming from based on the headline, then it's a long weird trip down into a very specific set of issues. Reminds me of encountering the Unabomber's writings for the first time.
posted by AdamCSnider at 5:47 PM on September 30, 2015 [10 favorites]

Eccentric scientist or unfolding psychotic episode?

It depends, is he rich or poor?
posted by Talez at 5:49 PM on September 30, 2015 [30 favorites]

Dick move, Jobb!
posted by boo_radley at 5:49 PM on September 30, 2015

"Scientific racism is creeping back into our thinking."
posted by ChuraChura at 5:50 PM on September 30, 2015 [9 favorites]

In an odd coincidence I wrote about this earlier today. In any case, I'll just leave this here: "A study says Germany's birth rate has slumped to the lowest in the world, prompting fears labour market shortages will damage the economy."

I know this sounds crazy, but I'd like you to consider the possibility that throwing your children’s economic future into a tire fire for no other reason than raw xenophobia is not the right play.
posted by mhoye at 5:52 PM on September 30, 2015 [11 favorites]

"Scientific racism is creeping back into our thinking."

Wow, I had forgotten about the white lesbian couple suing over having a mixed-race child. No matter how good people have it, empathy is an ongoing struggle, even for sexual minorities, let alone taxpayer-funded programmers.

"A study says Germany's birth rate has slumped to the lowest in the world, prompting fears labour market shortages will damage the economy."

What's funny is that Germany's post-WWII economic boom was fueled by an influx of cheap Turkish labor. One would think even conservatives would want immigrant labor to come in, if only to put pressure on the free market to be "freer".
posted by a lungful of dragon at 5:59 PM on September 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

mr_roboto: "a “small elite” and that "evil old men rule the world." Eccentric scientist or unfolding psychotic episode?"

Crypto-anti-semitism, I'd say.
posted by signal at 6:09 PM on September 30, 2015 [7 favorites]

I would just like to n+1 about the validity of Jobb's statement in the lede, i.e. "Immigration to my country harms me, it harms my family, it harms my people."

This is literally only true for definitions of "harm" that are about the whiteness of Germany (and Europe). There's some weird Marxist icing on the racist cake, but that's all it is, icing. He definitely doesn't have any sort of serious analysis about the "collapse of capitalism" or anything else, really. Just that somehow being human toward people fleeing horrific violence is bad. Because elites. And sovereignty. And European "genetic heritage."

I wish any of those were exaggerations.
posted by migrantology at 6:10 PM on September 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

A study says Germany's birth rate has slumped to the lowest in the world, prompting fears labour market shortages will damage the economy."

At risk of derail, if countries continue down this path of wanting to maintain population growth because no-one has developed an economic framework that works without growth, then our economics will destroy everyone, everything that people have worked for, and civilization itself.

Ending population growth doesn't need to mean a rapid decline - or any decline at all - so I can see there is legitimate economic concern at the rapidity Germany is facing if the "percentage of people of working age in the country - between 20 and 65 - would drop from 61% to 54% by 2030", but it still kind of hits a nerve when the instinctive solution to the problem of how to keep a society working is always "increase the population!" instead of "devise sustainable economics!".

In the context of refugees and xenophobia, I know that the economic benefit of immigrants is a necessary and legitimate point to make. I guess I just wish that redesigning the broken economic fundamentals was similarly in a spotlight :-/
posted by anonymisc at 6:10 PM on September 30, 2015 [47 favorites]

Eccentric scientist or unfolding psychotic episode?

The two are not mutually exclusive. Even if you replace eccentric with brilliant.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:26 PM on September 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Why didn't these Europeans protest immigration in the nineteenth century?

Oh wait, that was when millions of them were fleeing war and hunger -- and rather than take on low-paid work and integrate into society, we just took over the Americas.

Europeans are damned lucky that the current migrants don't behave as we did.
posted by jb at 6:43 PM on September 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you don't like immigration, go back to Africa.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:46 PM on September 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

Oh dear god. I have used that software in the past. I would not do so again, even if he did decide to allow it.
posted by lollusc at 6:47 PM on September 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Crypto-anti-semitism, I'd say.

Only because the Jews reject nature's harmonic simultaneous 4-day time cube!

In all seriousness, yeah, he almost certainly has a tic mark in the anti-semitism box, but if you carefully searched all his rantings, I wouldn't be stunned to find a screed about the phenylthiocarbamide non-tasters.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 6:47 PM on September 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Oh well. I guess everyone will have to start using RAxML and MrBayes like they were all doing already.
posted by Mitrovarr at 6:48 PM on September 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

All right, any other software engineers want to take a stab at making a GNU-licensed clone and cutting this dude's legs out from under him?

Or even better yet, some kind of donationware to fund causes for Syrian refugees?
posted by Itaxpica at 6:51 PM on September 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

Or was it the other one? ...I think it was the other one.
posted by Naberius at 6:59 PM on September 30, 2015 [19 favorites]

Any phylogeneticist more experienced than I want to explain why this software is special? I'm looking at the Wikipedia page, and I'm not seeing anything unique it offers. The only differences I see is that it has a GUI, which isn't really important (most anyone who needs this software can handle a CLI or desperately needs to learn to) and some scripting. But scripting is mostly for interfacing with other programs, and now that this has happened, everyone's going to cut support anyway (even if you don't care about the politics, it's now too unreliable to support), so that's basically ruined. The rest of the stuff is all covered by a half dozen other programs, some of which are excellent. I generally recommend RAxML for maximum-likelihood inference myself, particularly if you'd like your analysis to finish before the heat death of the universe. I have also had good experiences with GARLI.
posted by Mitrovarr at 7:01 PM on September 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm skeptical of the enforcability of these particular license terms.
posted by humanfont at 7:06 PM on September 30, 2015

Maybe licensing comes into play if a user is publishing data derived from it? I'm not understanding how him saying people can't play with code they already have, means that they can't play with code they already have. How does that even work?
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:48 PM on September 30, 2015

I'm always intrigued by these otherwise smart people who can't see what is wrong with being a raving bigot.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:55 PM on September 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Dip Flash: " otherwise smart people who can't see what is wrong with being a raving bigot."

What I love is how they always objectively, unbiasedly and scientifically arrive at the conclusion that their own specific "race" just happens to be superior to all others. What a lucky coincidence, no?
posted by signal at 7:57 PM on September 30, 2015 [14 favorites]

Yeah, it's...interesting to see how some people who pride themselves on their critical thinking skills and rationality maintain such impeccably batshit and self-serving blind spots.
posted by rtha at 8:37 PM on September 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

I really do get the impression that mental illness is involved here along with the xenophobia.
posted by edheil at 8:55 PM on September 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Am I missing something in the links? I mean, this guy's pretty clearly xenophobic and potentially ill, but I'm not seeing the straight up "my race good, your race bad, because science" that some people are criticizing him for?
posted by Maugrim at 9:10 PM on September 30, 2015

At the end of the second paragraph in the first link he literally says "Not to mention the loss of our European genetic and cultural heritage", which seems pretty blatant.
posted by Itaxpica at 9:12 PM on September 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

I am a computational biologist but don't do a lot of phylogenetics. My understanding is that not much of value was lost: most people are using other tools these days and most of the people using his software are doing so out of inertia.
posted by quaking fajita at 9:57 PM on September 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

"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,” says bioinformatician Gangolf Jobb

So he thinks the Nazis were a good idea and he's taking his very useful ball and going home?

On the list of assbags you go, Herr Jobb. Fich dich.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:01 PM on September 30, 2015

Christ, what an asshole.
posted by acb at 12:27 AM on October 1, 2015

Christus, was für ein Arschloch.
posted by w0mbat at 1:01 AM on October 1, 2015 [12 favorites]

If you have an app in Google Play there is a page in the Google Developer Console with 100+ checkboxes that lets you exclude countries from downloading your app on a country by country basis. I think it's mostly supposed to be for working around different legal/licensing issues that vary between territories but I've often wondered whether it could be used to make a political point like this.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 1:05 AM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

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."

To be fair, both of those statements are correct, if "the scientific system" is read as meaning "technology".

Of course, misuse to promote the goals of a small rich elite is not all that technology is used for. But that it is indeed being misused this way is, I would have thought, uncontroversial.

Also, if the rulers of the world (i.e. those actually in positions to make policy decisions affecting the lives of millions of people) counted fewer evil old men among their number, we would be making much more progress on stuff like slowing anthropogenic global warming and meeting the UN millennium development goals. As things stand at present, far too many resources are devoted to blowing shit up and not enough to making shit better.

None of which is to say that Jobb's position on migration is correct. I think he's dead wrong there.
posted by flabdablet at 2:08 AM on October 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is literally only true for definitions of "harm" that are about the whiteness of Germany (and Europe). There's some weird Marxist icing on the racist cake, but that's all it is, icing. He definitely doesn't have any sort of serious analysis about the "collapse of capitalism" or anything else, really. Just that somehow being human toward people fleeing horrific violence is bad. Because elites. And sovereignty. And European "genetic heritage."

So you're saying it's a more, shall we say, national form of socialism?
posted by acb at 4:11 AM on October 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

I wonder if the terms of his research grants allow him to do this? Mine have all had pretty explicit rules on what happens to the IP generated as a result of the funding. As does my institution.

It would be deeply satisfying to see his institution turn around and say "actually everyone can carry on using it".
posted by tinkletown at 4:53 AM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wow. What a surprise. A person from Germany who thinks that immigrants are terrible and ruin everything. Like Germany has been absolutely ruined by immigration for the last century. Ruined!

It's not like immigrants rebuilt Germany after two world wars when no one else really wanted to.

Oh, wait.

A science-based education really creates a nice rational population, doesn't it?

Oh, wait.
posted by clvrmnky at 5:59 AM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

The earlier the system crashes, the more damage can be avoided. Possibly a civil war in Europe.

This sounds like the "accelerationist" / "accelerationism" doctrine promoted by neoreactionary philosopher Nick Land. I wonder if Jobb is a neoreactionary.
posted by theorique at 9:09 AM on October 1, 2015

Between this guy and those sleazy VW execs, it's getting embarrassing to claim the German side of my own genetic and cultural heritage. Seems like he's doing more damage than any immigrants ever could from where I sit.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:12 AM on October 1, 2015

Between this guy and those sleazy VW execs, it's getting embarrassing to claim the German side of my own genetic and cultural heritage.

Could be worse; you could be Australian.
posted by acb at 12:50 PM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

God, fucking conspiracy communists. This is like the ones here that are like "vote Republican so we don't water down the people's anger."
posted by corb at 1:07 PM on October 1, 2015

galgolf the white amirite
posted by klangklangston at 1:38 PM on October 1, 2015

At risk of derail, if countries continue down this path of wanting to maintain population growth because no-one has developed an economic framework that works without growth, then our economics will destroy everyone, everything that people have worked for, and civilization itself.

not necessarily :P more naam!
posted by kliuless at 3:56 PM on October 1, 2015

The Wikipedia on the software make an interesting point that the 5 year old license of Treefinder doesn't mention that he can just make up new terms. Strictly speaking, that license still stands.
posted by Megafly at 7:54 PM on October 1, 2015

The software engineer may have expressed it in a clumsy way, but he raises an interesting question: how does a person say (in a neutral and non-hateful manner) that he wants Germany to stay German (culturally, linguistically, religiously, etc), and not become culturally Syrian or otherwise Middle Eastern? Is there a way to express this without being a bigot? Or being misinterpreted as being a bigot?

One Huffington Post writer wrote an interesting article trying to do this.
posted by theorique at 3:23 AM on October 2, 2015

Well, given that it would take a few orders of magnitude more migration to extinguish the local culture and turn Germany into an Arab country, that's not the argument; the argument would rather be that Germany should remain homogeneously German in culture, cuisine, religion, traditions and so on.

Of course, this implies that countries have homogeneous cultures, or that there was a golden age once where a country's culture was pure, before the migrants arrived and watered it down. Which, other than being somewhat unsavoury propositions, are provably false.

Anyway, if he wants to live somewhere homogeneously “German”, I'm sure there are towns/villages which have yet to be reached by döner kebabs or currywurst where one could do that.
posted by acb at 5:17 AM on October 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Refugees Being Housed in Dachau Concentration Camp Buildings: Director of memorial site complains about decision, which follows move to place other migrants in labor camp connected to Buchenwald

The refugees housed at Dachau: 'Where else should I live?' As Germany struggles to house thousands of new refugees, we talk to those living in the grounds of the former Dachau concentration camp
posted by homunculus at 9:13 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Theorique, I don't know if you're quoting racist talking points out of sincere belief or not, but regardless, this is not the right site for them.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:49 AM on October 4, 2015

Breitbart is a "racist site"? While I would describe them as conservative, they are pretty mainstream and certainly far from racist.

I'm trying to explore the question of migration from a contrarian standpoint here.
posted by theorique at 5:15 AM on October 5, 2015

(Also, I'm clarifying because I don't want anybody to think that I was posting from StormFront or something.)
posted by theorique at 5:26 AM on October 5, 2015

The Syrians are not migrants. They are refugees from a war zone.
posted by rtha at 8:55 AM on October 5, 2015 [3 favorites]