More seriously, he hasn't actually shown any stolen code, just that the app feels "surprisingly familiar" https://ma.tt/2016/10/wix-and-the-gpl/
Edit: I just checked the Android app and having a package named "org.wordpress.android.editor" matching the stuff in https://github.com/wix/WordPress-Editor-Android/tree/9f0e776... is pretty convincing.
If you look at that repo, what they are doing is totally unambiguous. The README literally acknowledges that they are using Wordpress code, describing the contents of the repository as a "React Native Wrapper for WordPress Rich Text Editor."
They applied the MIT license to their wrapper, which is using the GPL-licensed Wordpress code, and then they embed the whole thing in their proprietary app. They are now compelled to publish the source code of their entire application if they want to comply with the requirements of the GPL.
The gist I got was this - Wordpress was working on this in open source. Wix took their work, built on it, and didn't make their contributions open source, taking advantage of the repository and giving nothing back.
Which is fine if the code was BSD licensed, but the article states that Wordpress uses GPL, hence Wix may be violating the license regardless of the breach in attribution etiquette.
“One of the surest tests of the superiority or inferiority of a poet is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.”
T.S. Eliot
His post mentions "icons, class names, even bugs". That seems damning (just ripping icons would be a copyright violation on its own).
I'm really tired of these arguments. If you release something and say that it's 'free', it's pretty disingenuous to chase after someone for not releasing their own changes.
Calling it 'theft' doesn't really make sense because nothing of value was actually stolen. The original code is still there for all to enjoy.
Most places I've worked stay away from GNU code (besides compilers, servers, and anything not used in the main product) like the plague because of people like Matt Mullenweg.
I would much rather have the BSD license, which is truly free for everyone.
UPDATE: I always thought HN was the place for intelligent discourse, yet I am always disappointed.
GPL says: "If you take GPL code, you must publish the whole app as GPL." In the GPL mindset, open-source is contagious. Therefore if you package GPL code with a commercial license, then you've shipped software you didn't legally have a license for, which is grounds for unlimited damages. By the way, this is why your company stays away from GPL, not "People like Matt Mullenweg".
If you infringe the copyright on something closed, you do it by spreading that thing when you aren't supposed to. If you infringe the copyright on something open, you do it by refusing to distribute your enhancements to it when you're required to. They're not directly comparable situations.
Freedom goes in two directions. "Freedom to" and "Freedom from". The BSD license is a "Freedom to enhance the code as you wish" license. The GPL licenses are "Freedom from someone enhancing the code without sharing those enhancements". A "freedom to" license is great in the short term; it encourages individual products. A "freedom from" license is great in the long term; it encourages growth of the ecosystem as a whole.
Calling it "theft" is a stretch, just like in other cases of copyright violation. Still, the community is owed a release of the modified code. "Theft" captures the spirit of the situation, even if it's not applicable in the literal sense.
Whether or not the GPL is a ‘good thing’, the scenario in question is pretty cut and dry. The problem itsn’t “people like Matt Mullenweg”, it’s people and organizations who don’t RTFM on the licenses of the code they decide to co-opt into their mainline product. It looks an awful lot like Wix is afoul of the GPL, and therefore has probably committed copyright infringement.
Note that GNU allows you to actually do make millions of copies and sell them for profit! BUT you must also allow those who buy it to also do so! You can not take away those rights.
Again, despite my preference for the BSD license I side with Wordpress on this issue; it's a clear violation of the GPL and should be enforced.
It was awesome, super popular and could have been WordPress today.
They raised funding. Possibly under VC pressure, they made the license terms more closed source and restrictive.
Meanwhile, Matt Mullenweg had forked b2 and created WordPress under GPL.
When MovableType went closed source/more restrictive, their users fled to WordPress. The rest is pretty much history.
So what this historical context helps us understand is that firstly, WordPress/Automattic is very careful about ever going closed source with anything because they learned their lessons thanks to MovableType and what happened to them.
So WP has chosen to be open source, stay open source and defend open source because history has shown that is what the market wants and if you don't do that, they'll divorce you.
Living in that world as a multi-million (billion?) dollar company is a tough gig because, as Matt himself did with B2, anyone can fork your code and run with it.
But the one thing that WP/Automattic can count on is the GPL. If someone does fork the code, they are forever bound by the same competitive constraints that Automattic/WP is bound by. In other words: someone else can fork their code and so on in perpetuity.
So as long as WP enforces the GPL over WordPress, they will never have a competitor stronger than they are who can develop proprietary IP off their platform and gain a competitive advantage. The GPL ensures that anything created out of WordPress is always available to all competitors. And the competitor with the greatest head-start wins and that's WordPress.
This is really the basis for how multi-billion dollar companies are built out of open source. They count on the GPL to ensure everything they create never becomes a proprietary competitive advantage to a competitor that isn't also available to them.
So Matt M has a strategic imperative to always enforce the GPL on everything open source they do, or else they're building the foundation of the company that will kill them.
And this is exactly the case that Affero GPL was written for. (Affero is a modification to GPLv3.)
The fact that he's slinging accusations in print rather than using the legal system to settle a legal dispute suggests to me that he does not, in fact, have any evidence Wix is doing anything untoward beyond "this smells kinda fishy to me."
In a non-software example, if my neighbor intends to violate my property line with his new fence plans, I'll drop by, have a glass of lemonade with him, and discuss the issue. If we come to an agreement about the property line and can resolve the issue right there, that's the best outcome. If he insists on continuing to violate my rights even after we talked about it, only then would I seek legal recourse. To jump straight to court over it not only costs me and him a ton of money, it costs something more valuable: A fractured neighbor-to-neighbor relationship, ensuring that any future encounters will be hostile and costly.
Going to court to force release of said code is a much more expensive stick that can be held over the offending party's head.
Yes, that would have been a much better decision, for a library to use in a closed-source app. Ripping out the GPL code and substituting the MIT code should be the next thing you do. Then you can apologize to all of us for not understanding how popular software licenses work.
Also the fact that the company was once also known as "Wixpress" is easy to verify [1], not sure why he would contest that.
[1] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-29IDMU/0x0xS1193...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html
Couldn't wix just charge some ungodly sum and be done until someone ponies up the $$$?
Wix developers created an MIT licensed wrapper to bypass this restriction. In the terms of the GPL that isn't allowed. This is why you see BSD or MIT code being ported to the Linux kernel but it doesn't go back the other way.
Calling it stolen code is a little strong, in reality they are in violation of the GPL. If the Wordpress plugin has been LGPL or MIT then it wouldn't be an issue.
WP is not only SAAS, but also packaged software. You can use WP's platform to host your blog, or run it on your own server.
Wix is strictly SAAS, AFAIK (can I get a few more abbreviations in there?). You can only use their software on their platform - there is no packaged software that you can run on your own server.
Is this a GPLv3 thing? Did they somehow plug the SAAS hole?
Otherwise, it doesn't seem Mullenweg/WP has a leg to stand on.
http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-...
I just hope Wix then pushes their changes to the editor. And then we can in the future use the UI components of the WP Apocalypse project: https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/...
