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Jani Taskinen

Jani responds

Anglosphere

On Slashdot, I predicted that Jani Taskinen would respond to the outcry over his remarks:

If we follow Occam's razor then surely he would deny the words if the logs aren't true while if they are he would apologise for a sad, emotional rant. I suspect returning from his decision that he cannot work on PHP as long as Israeli Zend backs it is rather impossible at this point, but that decision in itself is respectable even for people like me who disagree with the logic (or even viewpoint) behind it. It is his right not to want to work with Israelis, but for his own sake I hope he tries to do some damage control.

And I think his PHP contributions are not the most notable background here. He's a UN peacekeeper and has in fact been stationed in Lebanon. If you think the PHP team is not going to be happy about this publicity, think of how the UN should feel when there own forces make such emotional hateful rants in public after a "friendly" fire incident - as bad as that incident may be.

And indeed he has responded:

I apologize for the wrong choice of words in "fuck jews" where it should have been "fuck israel". And of course I mean the government of Israel when I say "I'm anti-israel". I have friends who are jews and it does not bother me at all. Hopefully they don't get offended by those remarks I made.. :(

Unfortunately there is no explicit apology for the call to "nuke Israel", which is more worrisome than someone merely opposing Israel's government. However, any apology is better than none. I'm not Jewish nor Israeli so it's not for me to accept it, but it may please those who are.

Of course I still have doubt whether people demonstrating emotional outbursts in are fit for duty. In the specific case of Jani, I find it hard to find a firm position on whether his views of Israel are relevant to the UNAMA-AFG mission assisting NATO-ISAF. But I hold it possible that the UN will be more careful now to assign him to any mission in the Middle East in the future, or that Jani himself would turn down such an assignment. I'm curious, but I think this wraps matters up.

Jani Taskinen Wrap-up

Software

The Baheyeldin Dynasty has a nice wrap up of Jani Taskinen's departure from PHP over Israel, although not providing much more new information than my initial reaction.

It does however offer some open source and geopolitics musings, including Herbert Xu's Debian departure over the Taiwanese flag. Another good example, although not noted, would be Neil Steven's KDE departure over anti-Americanism. I maintain that Jani's case is the most interesting because he's also known for his UN peacekeeping activies, although so far the repercussions of the drama appear limited to the open source community.

PHP turns ugly to anti-semite Jani Taskinen

Software

Jani Taskinen, one of the lead developers of the PHP project, and former UN peacekeeper, has announced to immediately quit the project:

Thank you all for the last 6 years or so. It has been fun (sometimes) and many times not so much fun. Unfortunately I have had enough and I don't want to be associated with this project anymore.

I'm sure most people (the ones who matter) can understand why. If someone doesn't, I could not care less. Take care.

Okay, shit happens. Software development sure can get tedious and we all need a break, or move on to other projects. So why did Jani snap? Rude co-workers? Slipping deadlines? Ever-growing bug lists? Insane development requests? No, none of that.

Four UN peacekeepers were killed by Israeli fire last week, including a Finnish co-worker or even friend of his, so Jani decided he hates Jews:

<_sniper_> hehehehe..
<_sniper_> all other members of the UN security council wanted to condemn Israel for attacking the UN post but USA (freedom and democracy) vetoed it....Israel says the resolution was fair.
<_sniper_> hell yeah..
<_sniper_> NUKE ISRAEL!
<_sniper_> I'm so full of that fucking country..
<Shai-Tan> indeed
<_sniper_> Eye for an eye..I'll kill one Israel officer for one of ours, is that fair?
<_sniper_> I bet I'll be hanged for that.
<_sniper_> They kill one of my brother-in-arms-for-peace..I think I'm entitled to kill one of their nazis.
<_sniper_> Hezbollah, where can I enlist?
<_sniper_> FYI: I don't care at all what anybody thinks about me. I'm going to be openly anti-Israel from now on. This was the last straw for me. Fuck you jews.
<_sniper_> I will also quit this project. As long as it's backed by some Israel company, I don't want to have anything to do with it.
<_sniper_> Good bye.
<-- _sniper_ (~jani@a88-112-115-63.elisa-laajakaista.fi) has left #php.pecl

If that IRC log is correct: what a loser.

First there is a claim that Israel said the resolution was fair. So then why hate the country when it was the US who vetoed? Whatever.

Secondly there is a call for nuclear destruction of Israel. Not cool.

Thirdly note that Hezbollah was very active near the UN positions, so there is ample reason to believe this was a mere accident on Israel's part, possibly unavoidable even.

Last but not least there is support for Hezbollah, more hatred of Jews and finally a decision that PHP has become tainted merely because it is backed by a company (Zend) having to do fuck all with all this yet happens to be Israeli. Obviously making the project as undesired on this planet as those Jews themselves?

Well, good riddance Jani. I know you couldn't care less about what people think of you now, but as long as you don't start to blow up civilians Hezbollah-style.. we couldn't care less.

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