ASF board member resigns in protest of org’s online chatter ‘policing’
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.» When the members of the TinkerPop project – a graph database and analytics framework – discussed the tweets, they said something along the lines of: «Marko has a non-Apache affiliated Twitter account that presents racy satire.
