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Apache

Apache Software Foundation Ousts TinkerPop Creator (theregister.com) 278

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Frosty P writes: The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has removed Marko Rodriguez from the TinkerPop project he co-founded because his provocative Twitter posts were said to have violated the ASF Code of Conduct. "I was removed from the project I started 11 years ago for 'publishing offensive humor that borders on hate speech,'" Rodriguez explained in an email to The Register. "However, now that Big Tech has secured the ASF board, it is a way to 'shut me up' about the monopolistic practices of Big Tech." Rodriguez argues that "woke culture" is a creation of "Big Tech," and that it serves to protect the industry's economic monopoly "by monopolizing the ideology of the people." Asked whether he sees the problem in light of the content-moderation challenge faced by social media services, which police speech without clear, consistent rules or due process, he said not at all. "I like to tweet, so I tweet. If Apache likes to police tweets, then may they police tweets," Rodriguez replied. "The question becomes: do they really like to police tweets? Are they finding as much joy in policing tweets as I find in tweeting tweets? If so, then we are both happy and the world rejoices. If not, then how can we help Apache find joy ... For joyless people ultimately impede those that do find joy in what they do." In a subsequent message he noted he has received death threats demanding he apologize for his thoughts, and that those people always assume he's a Trump supporter. "I've never voted," he said. "I simply don't care."
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Apache Software Foundation Ousts TinkerPop Creator More

Apache Software Foundation Ousts TinkerPop Creator

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  • Help help I'm being oppressed!

    • No, all of us using TinkerPop are being oppressed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @02:32PM (#61096560)

      Help help I'm being oppressed!

      Hey moron, this wasn't some small whiner, but a co-founder and critical figure in the TinkerPop management team.

      But thank God ASF corporate got involved, overrode the Apache Project Management Committee and fired him over some dank memes.

      FFS, you worthless assholes who've never accomplished anything in your miserable lives must live for moments like this where you can take real visionaries like Marko and treat them like the crap you are.

      Now everyone using TinkerPop is going to have to start asking hard questions since one of the most important figures just got banned from leading the project by a bunch of political apparatchiks.

      • Re:No, all of us using TinkerPop are being oppress (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Chas ( 5144 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:10PM (#61096754) Homepage Journal

        This shit highlights why "ethical" companies are evil.

      • Re:No, all of us using TinkerPop are being oppress (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:24PM (#61096800)

        Tinkerbell WTF is Tinkerpop?

    • Re:other people don't agree with my fringe views (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @02:38PM (#61096584) Homepage Journal

      TFA mentions he has two Twitter feeds. One already banned, the other you can make up your own mind about: https://twitter.com/thecoopste... [twitter.com]

      • Some of it in the latest seem about cancel culture, but some of it seem to be random attacks against a woman, French people, woke culture,.... I can't make head or tail of it. But I would STILL would like to see the original twit, because the guy may be unhinged now through anger at being dumped for a bad joke. I can understand the follow up anger to a degree. What I would like to know is what was the original bad joke which generated him being dropped. THAT is an important info. because if it was as unhing

        • "I find joy in Twitter."

          "Twitter makes me happy."

          "O, joyous Twitter!"

          "How can we help Apache be as joyful on Twitter as I am?"

          "I'm not a Trump supporter... I don't care, I don't even vote!"

          I have a hard time reckoning these heavy vibes of self-delusion, and your characterization of his Twitter feed, with him just now being pushed there. It honestly looks like a deficiency of character, and that's almost always a lifelong thing, people don't turn that way in an instant.

      • Still no idea... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @04:16PM (#61097010) Homepage

        I scanned the first couple of dozen tweets (that's more tweets than I usually read in a week already), but still clueless of what that twitter account is about. I do find it offensive personally - I am offended that he seems to think he is funny and insightful when, to me, he is neither.
        But I wouldn't of course ban him from anything because of that.

      • TFA mentions he has two Twitter feeds. One already banned, the other you can make up your own mind about: https://twitter.com/thecoopste... [twitter.com]

        Sheesh, that's lame. As you Brits say "The only thing worse than being witty is not being witty."

        I can enjoy humor be it left or right, but as we say on this side of the pond, "He's about as funny as a chapped ass."

        The ladd probably shouldn't take up comedy as a new carreer

      • Thanks for the link. A little bit of it is offensive, and a lot of it is funny as hell. He seems to tear down more shibboleths than he supports, and he seems to be an equal-opportunity racist, genderist, culturist, or whatever. If this is what justifies giving its author the boot, somebody needs to call a waaambulance and get those butt-hurt folks some treatment. In general I'm in favour of some 'wokeness', but this makes me understand why some people are so pissed off at woke culture.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      I think it can be oppression. As with a lot of tricky questions, the answer is "it depends."

      Employers, and foundations that support projects like this, do have a legitimate interesting in protecting their reputation. So if someone becomes notorious, and it's a distraction from getting stuff done, then they have some justification in parting ways. But this feels more like *making* someone notorious so you can part ways. This is an obscure guy working on an relatively obscure project. Nobody would have h

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TomWinTejas ( 6575590 )
        It does appear to be rather one sided though, where those running around calling people N@zis and attributing everything to white supremacy face little to no consequences for their accusations in this regard. I'm not in any way saying that they actually should... so long as people are communicating as individuals and not on behalf of a company or organization, those views should have little impact upon their association with that company or organization. But it does seem odd that those who actually are in

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by thejynxed ( 831517 )

          Oh, but they do face consequences, in that I and many others refuse them jobs if they need one, or refuse to use any service or good they provide if they provide a service or good.

          This is not exciting clickbait however, so such things rarely get posted in some flashy font by some hack blogger posing as a journalist at the New York Times.

        • It does appear to be rather one sided though, where those running around calling people N@zis and attributing everything to white supremacy face little to no consequences for their accusations in this regard.

          To be certain, a number of fired people at Google, blame the patriarchy and racism for their dismissal https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]

          https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]

          So what do you think of that - I think most people who get fired, deserve it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          To be fair, the other side has hosted a few rather notable witch hunts too.

    • Re:other people don't agree with my fringe views (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:15PM (#61096762) Homepage

      You will find this link informative: I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me [quillette.com].

      "I once had a well paid job in what might be described as the social justice industry. Then I upset the wrong person, and within a short window of time, I was considered too toxic for my employerâ(TM)s taste. I was publicly shamed, mobbed, and reduced to a symbol of male privilege. I was cast out of my career and my professional community."

      • You will find this link informative: I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me [quillette.com].

        "I once had a well paid job in what might be described as the social justice industry. Then I upset the wrong person, and within a short window of time, I was considered too toxic for my employerâ(TM)s taste. I was publicly shamed, mobbed, and reduced to a symbol of male privilege. I was cast out of my career and my professional community."

        The far left and the far right are remarkably similar. That is what led me to believe that left and right isn't quite accurate, but is more of a circle. And eventually, the furthest in either direction become indistinguishable except for the rhetoric.

  • cool story bro (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @02:19PM (#61096488)
    someone tweeted something, we didn't see the tweets and you don't know what they are either. but someone else was offended, and now the first guy was fired from a project you never heard of.

  • It's open source (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @02:20PM (#61096498)
    It's open source, so he can always fork it if he wants to. If it's a bunch of navel gazers that don't actual contribute anything meaningful to the actual project running the show over there then the fork will be more successful in the long term. FOSS is already built to withstand moral busybodies.

  • I was banned from Ars Technica (Score:4, Informative)

    by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @02:31PM (#61096556)
    Which has become basically the Daily Kos of tech (although I still really like Eric Berger and John Gitlin's articles - they're basically the only non-political writers on the site). I called a Biden policy "socialist" and they banned my account, after 14 years.

    • Re:I was banned from Ars Technica (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Wookie Monster ( 605020 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:40PM (#61096880)
      What was the exact comment that got you banned? It doesn't make sense to me that claiming something is socialist is an instant ban.

    • Re:I was banned from Ars Technica (Score:5, Interesting)

      by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:48PM (#61096912)
      Considering how nothing about Biden is socialist, they most likely banned you for obvious trolling.

    • Uum, I'm not hating you, but, mate, from my experience, people like would call Reagan "socialist". Literally, if yo described his views and policies...
      "You" are' so far right, *everything* looks extemist left to you.
      At least that is the stereotype/experience one assumes with people who say what you said.

      And on that matter: Yes, -isms are always bad, because they are by definition the blind ideology version of an idea, but ... did you even stop and think that maybe, being social to other people was a good th

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by fuzznutz ( 789413 )

      Which has become basically the Daily Kos of tech (although I still really like Eric Berger and John Gitlin's articles - they're basically the only non-political writers on the site). I called a Biden policy "socialist" and they banned my account, after 14 years.

      This does not surprise me in the least. When the comments stray to the political, any disagreement with the groupthink is quickly and massively modded down. I had noticed that diversity of opinions had dropped off but didn't realize that how bad it was until I posted a comment that disagreed with the author's opinion in a technical article. Since I knew I would be a target I wrote very carefully and gave copious reasoning but I was quickly downmodded. In 24 hours my comment was completely missing from t

    • I called a Biden policy "socialist" and they banned my account, after 14 years.

      Given you posting history here and your frankly absurd position on many of the political topics that come up on Slashdot, I guarantee you didn't get banned for just calling a policy "socialist".

  • The Code of Conduct works exactly as we warned (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @02:42PM (#61096620)

    Rodriguez was a co-founder and is an OG in the modern graph computing/database space. This is precisely what so many of us warned about codes of conduct being used to cripple FOSS projects by political actors.

    I mean look Coraline Ehmke's personal posts. Ehmke is an absolutely toxic garbage example of humanity on social media. The very living embodiment of the unhinged, angry at everyone, vitriolic tranny.

    And that's the person whose code of conduct everyone adopted. Just let that sink in.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Do you have an actual criticism of the CoC, or just that ad hominem attack?

      • Re:The Code of Conduct works exactly as we warned (Score:5, Informative)

        by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:28PM (#61096818)
        I don't know who Coraline Ehmke is, but judging from the comment they were the author of the code of conduct that the ASF is using. I've not read any of their social media posts, but the comment suggests the author of that code of conduct is about par for the course in terms of social media posters in how they behave on social media.

        The criticism is that it's a "Rules for thee, but not for me" situation where it's arbitrarily applied. It isn't so much a criticism of that particular code of conduct, but the fact that any exists at all. I think that's fairly easy to understand from applying a small bit of reading comprehension. I don't know if singling out one particular individual is useful (or even truthful since no links to examples of toxic behavior were provided) but if that one particular individual is the author of the CoC and is not following it themselves, it does serve to highlight the hypocrisy.

      • Re:The Code of Conduct works exactly as we warned (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Chas ( 5144 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:30PM (#61096828) Homepage Journal

        He stated the problem quite explicitly.

        These CoCs can be used to silence and undermine those who don't align with the woke orthodoxy du jour.

        Simply because you find the guy offensive and thus don't give a shit doesn't mean that the methodology on display here isn't bad and evil.

    • This is precisely what so many of us warned about codes of conduct being used to cripple FOSS projects by political actors.

      I thought so too... and then I actually read the twitter feed they are up in arms about. https://twitter.com/thecoopste... [twitter.com]

      I think TFA summed it up nicely.

      Its content is deliberately engineered to offend everyone, achingly so. We could tell you it is lazy and punches down, which are both kryptonite for good satire,

      Or as former ASF board member Niclas Hedhman described it:

      "The tweets in question were obvious satire, 'bad/dark humor' and trolling for the sake of making people upset," said Hedhman. "It was the essence of why I am not on Twitter and think it is the worst plague that has been inflicted on humans in recent years. I didn't like Marko's tactics, but I can understand his angle."

      You can call it "cancel culture" but really what's happening is the foundation is protecting their image by disassociating themselves. It's literally a business decision because it has the potential to cause them reputational harm. Frankly, if you don't want to be part of that organization then it

      • Re:The Code of Conduct works exactly as we warned (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @05:43PM (#61097312) Homepage

        You can call it "cancel culture" but really what's happening is the foundation is protecting their image by disassociating themselves. It's literally a business decision because it has the potential to cause them reputational harm.

        Yes, that is exactly the core of cancel culture: People threaten to judge the whole ASF because of the clearly unrelated comments of one person related to a particular piece of software.

        This is reminiscent of the worst of McCarthyism and the Red Scare during the 1950s in the US. Then the question was "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party?", which was at least remotely defensible because CPUSA was a front for Russian attempts to undermine or overthrow the United States. Now, the question that gets you blacklisted is merely "Have you ever tweeted a mean joke? [But mean jokes about Republicans are perfectly fine.]"

        • Re:The Code of Conduct works exactly as we warned (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @06:03PM (#61097370)

          Yes, that is exactly the core of cancel culture: People threaten to judge the whole ASF because of the clearly unrelated comments of one person

          That's nothing new and the response has been around since PR was invented. The only thing that has changed is people's ability to communicate with a mind-boggling number of people. It used to be difficult but now with social media you just have to type it up and hit send.

          If that's how you define "cancel culture" then it's been around for a century but it's only in the last decade or so that people have optimized a way to bring consequences upon themselves which frankly is their own doing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      I mean look Coraline Ehmke's personal posts. Ehmke is an absolutely toxic garbage example of humanity on social media. The very living embodiment of the unhinged, angry at everyone, vitriolic tranny.

      I looked at her twitter feed, scrolled through the first three screenfuls, and didn't find anything that seemed toxic. That was all the time I was prepared to spend on twitter to try make your point for you. If you have anything to backup your claims, I'd appreciate it.

      What I dislike in your post, and the ASF case, and the Carano case, is that we're told a person's posts are problematic in some way but (1) we only see cherry-picked examples if that; never any context for us to know whether those cherry-pick

    • And that's the person whose code of conduct everyone adopted. Just let that sink in.

      Do as I say. Be kind to one another. But don't forget to go fuckyourself. Now just because I said that last part does it mean you should now not do the first part? I.e. is there something in the Code you specifically disagree with other than publisher of it being an arse so politically incorrect his entire Twitter account got banned?

      This is precisely what so many of us warned about codes of conduct being used to cripple FOSS projects by political actors.

      Hardly. More likely in the modern world where your private time is public people in high profile positions need to learn that their position depends on a certain degree of publi

  • Just don't tweet. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you have bigoted, sexist, homophobic and/or racist views, well fine there's nothing we can do about that.

    As soon as you start tweeting them, instagramming them, facebooking them, parlering them or making sure people know you have these views, that we can do something about.

    This is not a tech issue, btw. If I have a group of black friends and I walk up and start calling them the N word, they will unfriend me IRL and possibly kick my ass in the process.

    We think we should have the ability to say anything we

    • EVERYONE "has" those views nowadays.

      Because *no matter* what you say, bullies will *always* find a narrtive to "interpret" you that way. No matter what.

      I've posted two short youtube comedy videos above that I won't repeat here, that parodize that kind of social cancer.

  • Nobody wanted to hear what nerds had to say. They were socially inept clowns whose out loud mutterings were more a product of their utter lack of emotion intelligence and low levels of human contact. What came out of their mouths was alternately embarrassing and offensive.

    Sounds like it's still true.

  • I mean, leaving aside the fact that nobody else is a mindreader and can know what he is thinking, even if he *were* thinking things that others didn't like, if he didn't actually *do* anything wrong, then asking for such an apology still amounts to apologizing for something that he didn't do.

    • Posting thinly veiled racist humor on twitter is actually doing something. If you see what's left of what he posted on Twitter, the choices were to oust him or to wait until the consequences of his anti-woke stealth-racism affected the project in some way. It would've been a bigoted disaster waiting to happen.

      • And to be clear, this would only count as stealth racism to an American using a barebones definition of racism; it's stealthy in the same sense that a windowless white van with "FREE CANDY" on the side is stealthy because it isn't labelled "PEDOPHILE RAPE VAN."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        Then in fact, they should be asking him to apologize for *posting* such remarks, not simply thinking them.

        • True, thinking them was bad too, but he could've kept that to himself :-P

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )
            Why do you think there can be any notion of "bad" thinking?

            • Factual correctness would be one useful measurement for discerning good from bad thoughts, in which case all racist thoughts are extremely bad thoughts. Bad actions start with bad thoughts. All the memes he posted originated from bad thoughts and the choice to repost them also started with bad thoughts.

    • Ayup - thought crimes have been a thing for a long time in the US, since McCarthy at least.

    • The hey thing is to NEVER play along.

      As we former nerds kids all know: It more you give in to a bully, the more the bully will bully you.
      Like a rapist wants his victim to scream in panic.

      You wait until they look awayy use your element of surprise, remember that martial arts course mom sent you to, *and whack him like Hardcore Henry [youtube.com]*, one-hit-knockdown.

    • if he didn't actually *do* anything wrong

      We wouldn't be having this conversation if he didn't. And presumably his Twitter account wouldn't have been banned.

      Is it a thought crime? Possibly. Do you want to associate with people who have those thoughts? That is the key question here. Like it or not if you have a high profile position then public relations becomes part of your job, even when you're not on the clock.

      If you feel like going on on offensive rant I highly recommend the "Post Anonymously" button, or maybe not Tweet under your real verified

  • Free Speech (Score:4, Informative)

    by randalware ( 720317 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:15PM (#61096766) Journal

    We have unfollow & block functions ?

    Perhaps we need more robust option on them ?

    Also could use the same on follow & retweet ?

    But what we do NOT need is gate keepers to be censoring !!!

    facts, lies, misrepresentations, opinions ? Tune your bullshit detector.

    Do be a thin skinned snowflake. Reality isn't pretty, although the math will work.

    Always want to be on the right side of history ? You won't be. Things change.

    It takes all kinds to make a world, but you may wish there was fewer of some.

    There is no such thing as a free lunch.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      He was in a position of responsibility at the organisation. One of those responsibilities was to act professionally and be welcoming to all contributors.

      If he can't do that then Apache don't have to keep him on, they can find someone who can do the job.

    • We have unfollow & block functions ?

      Yes. That's how the project felt. They unfollowed and blocked someone they didn't want to associate with anymore. Given he was part of the project that meant firing him.

      At a certain position your PR and public image becomes part of your job, even off the clock.

  • Interesting application of the CoC (Score:5, Informative)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:22PM (#61096794) Homepage

    Assuming that the obvious Code of Conduct [apache.org] is the one Apache is applying, they are way out of line. The very first sentence states that
    "This code of conduct applies to all spaces managed by the Apache Software Foundation". While it does mention Twitter, this is specifically as "communication channel used by our communities" - meaning any official Apache Twitter feed, or any official feed of an Apache community.

    This cannot possibly apply to a private Twitter account.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The claim is that he posted some of it on Apache mailing lists. He denies it.

      • The claim is that he posted some of it on Apache mailing lists. He denies it.

        Go back to TFA. Niclas Hedhman, the ASF board member who resigned over the whole fiasco, also denies it.

        The claim that Rodriguez published his tweets to the private@tinkerpop mailing list are untrue, insisted Hedhman, as he said is the claim that Rodriguez used the ASF resources to humiliate people.

    • The account can't be characterized as private. it's quite public, anyone can see it. (The word you're looking for was probably "personal".) Your employer (or volunteer group, whatever) has always cared about your behavior in public. They don't want to be associated with an embarrassment. It shouldn't take a code of conduct for you to grasp that.

      The reason they cited the code of conduct is because referencing a written policy is always better than the guy in charge issuing the statement from his own mouth. T

      • If that's true then someone could be removed for swearing too much while playing basketball at the park, since the ASF CoC [apache.org] forbids

        Excessive or unnecessary profanity

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @04:02PM (#61096962)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • He sounds like a massive douche.

    • Right, so you promplty approve of being a massive douche to him too, you massive douche. Yadda yadda "punishment " yadda "social justice" "more equal" yadda.

  • A generation ago there was no avenue to allow our every thought to potentially be seen by millions. You could say something not PC and it didn't go beyond those in the immediate surroundings. And normally those people who were near were likely trusted.

    Now many feel all their thoughts are deserving of public review. Now I haven't seen Mr. Rodriguez' comments and won't pass judgement... but if you can't deal with the consequences don't put yourself in a position to be judged.

    Wheton rule #1 - Don't be a

  • Irony... (Score:3)

    by laird ( 2705 ) <lairdp@gmailCOW.com minus herbivore> on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @06:32PM (#61097434) Journal

    Ironically, the reason that people can generally be fired without any protection is that the same group of people complaining about getting fired being "cancel culture" is the right-wing that got "right to work" laws passed in most states, ensuring that employers can fire employees without cause or advanced warning. If you wanted to have job security, perhaps advocate for policies that protect workers from arbitrary termination? Of course, they spent many decades before that getting people fired or products boycotted for having opinions that they didn't like, though since they were the ones doing it they called it "moral" instead of "cancel culture" and apparently they loved the idea until people started using it against them.

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