8 ms·

WordPress creator slams Wix: ‘Your app editor is built with stolen code’

194 points by jaredtking 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
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Mathnerd314 10y ago
"Good artists borrow, great artists steal" 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/ 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/9f0e776c74ba9021cba6e1cdb7d8962131c507b8/WordPressEditor/src/main/java/org/wordpress/android/editor https://github.com/wix/WordPress-Editor-Android/tree/9f0e776... is pretty convincing.
- tomdell 10y ago
  He mentioned that you can look and see on GitHub that Wix explicitly forked Wordpress repositories. 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.
  - otoburb 10y ago
    >>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.
    - charlesdm 10y ago
      I don't even understand what the point in doing this would be, given they're a publicly traded company. Seems like a very careless decision. If they liked the app, they should've just copied the concept and feel of the app but rewritten the actual code. That way the GPL license would not apply. How much would that cost? A few hundred thousand?
      - bdcravens 10y ago
        You're assuming this is a decision made by executives, as opposed to lazy developers.
        marincounty 10y ago
        But isn't that why executives make the real money? They are suspose to make sure the developers aren't just copying/pasting code? Or, at least mention it a few times in one of their thousand meetings? (I'm just guessing. It seems like one of those companies--the company with endless cappuccino, sweet buns meetings.) And will the average customer of Wix even hear about this "lifted" code--no. Will they care--no. Do they know about open source code--no. Did I ever like Wix--no, but that doesn't matter. To budding web developers--there's still a lot of businesses/customers that need websites. Don't let companies like Wix take all the money. (I really don't like companies that use open source code, and then propriatize it.)
    - kevlened 10y ago
      Although it seems against the spirit of GPL, the GPL doesn't explicitly protect against code hosted as a service, so the wix website isn't in violation. That's why AGPL exists. IANAL, but their private fork (I couldn't find a public one on Github) is also technically permissible, as it's not a redistribution of the code. Edit: if what's in question are strictly web assets (images, js, etc), then I'm pretty sure, but not certain, this is a violation
      - charlesdm 10y ago
        But the app is? If they release a modified version of a GPL Android app, they would need to supply the source code, no? The Wix app would constitute a derived work.
        kevlened 10y ago
        That seems fair. The GPL has a loophole for network-provided services, but apps are native.
        giancarlostoro 10y ago
        Correct, unless WordPress goes AGPL then Wix can keep their hosted code to themselves. However, the Android App which they should of made themselves will need to be open sourced or taken down and open sourced. The GPL if I remember correctly makes it so upon request (thinking of BMW) you must be able to provide access to the source code, even if you sell the product, that means that whoever buys a GPL'd product from you must also receive the code, but if they didn't buy your product there should be no reason for them to have it if I'm not mistaken. The GPL is interesting, and while not my first choice, it's definitely not a terrible choice.
        charlesdm 10y ago
        GPL is absolutely useless for commercial products, imo. Unless you can run it encapsulated on some sort of web service as a standalone executable. If the goal is to have more open source code, and more code sharing across systems and services then more code should actually be BSD licensed.
  - labria 10y ago
    FYI: Wix open-sourced a ton of react-native stuff built internally to write the app in question: https://github.com/wix?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=react-native https://github.com/wix?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=react-native
- pavlov 10y ago
  How should he show code when the Wix app is closed source? His post mentions "icons, class names, even bugs". That seems damning (just ripping icons would be a copyright violation on its own).
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    Well, any code that was built on top of GPLed code needs not to be closed source, in order to comply with the license that they accessed the code under.
    - pavlov 10y ago
      No disagreement there. Mathnerd314 asked for proof of stolen code, which of course is difficult to provide when we're talking about a closed source product. So the original authors must resort to indirect proof like comparing visuals and inspecting the binary.
- deleted 10y ago
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- foolrush 10y ago
  Reading the whole passage is much more illuminating than that misattributed drek that Jobs misquoted thanks, likely, to a poorly researched biography: “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
  - pavlov 10y ago
    Did Eliot have something against the comma? Just wondering...
    - kwhitefoot 10y ago
      No, it's Goodreads that has mangled it; there is a better and complete version at Bartleby: http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw11.html http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw11.html. We turn first to the parallel quotations from Massinger and Shakespeare collocated by Mr. Cruickshank to make manifest Massinger’s indebtedness. One of the surest of tests 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 from that from which it was 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. Chapman borrowed from Seneca; Shakespeare and Webster from Montaigne. The two great followers of Shakespeare, Webster and Tourneur, in their mature work do not borrow from him; he is too close to them to be of use to them in this way. Massinger, as Mr. Cruickshank shows, borrows from Shakespeare a good deal. Let us profit by some of the quotations with which he has provided us— Massinger: Can I call back yesterday, with all their aids That bow unto my sceptre? or restore My mind to that tranquillity and peace It then enjoyed? Shakespeare: Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrops of the world Shall ever medecine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday.
- segphault 10y ago
  Matt links to the relevant GitHub repo in his blog post: https://github.com/wix/react-native-wordpress-editor https://github.com/wix/react-native-wordpress-editor 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_mitsuhiko 10y ago
    If they don't distribute it (SaaS only) then they do not need to publish anything.
    - bitJericho 10y ago
      That's not necessarily true. Some licenses consider html itself as protected code.
    - segphault 10y ago
      It's an iOS application. They are distributing it in the iOS App Store.
- tptacek 10y ago
  That code is about inspiration, not about literal theft.
chinese_dan 10y ago
So copyright infringement isn't 'theft', yet violating the GNU is theft? You can't download a car.... 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.
- khedoros1 10y ago
  GPL is Free as in "don't use this if you want to close it". 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.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- egwynn 10y ago
  Your comment reads like you don’t understand either 1. the intention of the GPL (copyleft), 2. how it’s supposed to work (requiring derivative works to also be GPL), or 3. you don't think it’s legally enforceable (it is). 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.
z3t4 10y ago
The reason why someone would use something like Wix is that they don't have to deal with source code. So they wouldn't lose any business if they released their source code. They might even gain good will and popularity by doing so.
- criddell 10y ago
  It's not about customers, it's about competitors.
- disordinary 10y ago
  You mean they won't have to deal with hosting, 99% of Wordpress users don't look at the source code, same with Ghost, Drupal, Silverstripe, etc.
  - z3t4 10y ago
    Do you think Wordpress would make more or less money if they where open/closed source ?
    - disordinary 10y ago
      I think they probably wouldn't be in business if they were closed source. They built a business on top of an open source product which already existed (but was created and maintained by the CEO of Wordpress) that open source platform allows them to claim that they run 25% of the internet with the consequent brand awareness and ecosystem.
ivraatiems 10y ago
If he had a case, he wouldn't be giving interviews about it. He'd be suing them. And he'd be right to do so. 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."
- fencepost 10y ago
  Very frequently the goal of licensing with the GPL and challenging violators is not financial gain (or punishment) but to force the violators to comply with the license and release the offending code. 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.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  Automatically suing every time you think you have a case does not seem like a smart move. Suing someone turns a disagreement into a war. Starting out with a blog post and escalating from there seems like a much more diplomatic and sensible approach.
- morganvachon 10y ago
  In cases like this, the court of public opinion can often be all that is necessary to resolve the issue and push the violator to do the right thing. This avoids costly litigation and makes things easier on both sides. If the violator chooses to ignore the public outcry, then certainly there is the legal path to follow next. 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.
mmaunder 10y ago
Back when blogging was just starting out, MovableType was the most popular platform. Written by Ben and Mena Trott, it was open source and written in perl. 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.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  How could they enforce the GPL against a company offering Wordpress as a SaaS application? This Wix app is different since it's a mobile app I believe. Unless WordPress uses a version of GPL that accounts for SaaS they couldn't do much about anything but someone offering on-prem solutions or actual apps right?
velmu 10y ago
So WordPress finally created something that can be reused outside of the walled garden in other competing projects. Yay! https://medium.com/@velmu/dear-drupal-and-wordpress-please-create-decoupled-components-d91b72267716#.bw2995nd7 https://medium.com/@velmu/dear-drupal-and-wordpress-please-c... 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/components https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/...
pebcakID10T 10y ago
I think it is a fitting punishment for those who copy parts of the Wordpress codebase in their product that they must now maintain Wordpress code in their product.
labria 10y ago
Wix developer replying: https://medium.com/@talkol/how-i-found-myself-accused-of-stealing-code-from-wordpress-a7350da9f9f2#.bgj085y0q https://medium.com/@talkol/how-i-found-myself-accused-of-ste...
- benmarks 10y ago
  What a perfect response. He evidently has cause to take Automattic to task, yet he turns the whole thing on its head for the benefit of Wix. Masterful.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  The WordPress GPL Rich Text component in question, is actually a wrapper around another Rich Text component named ZSSRichTextEditor which is licensed MIT. In retrospect it would have been easier to use it directly. 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.
avirambm 10y ago
CEO of Wix responded: http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/ http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-...
- jessaustin 10y ago
  What an airhead. It's all about feelings and impressions and mutual admiration! No, it's not about those things. You violated a license, and you got called on it. Fix your shit, apologize, and move on. Don't dump a PR load on us without bothering to learn and understand what you did wrong.
- firasd 10y ago
  About "everything we improved there or modified, we submitted back as open source", the GPL doesn't let you redistribute modified code and only release the modified code unfortunately. I guess "we will release the app you saw as well" may mean that they'd open source the whole app and thus be compliant. 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/0x0xS1193125-13-387285/1576789/filing.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-29IDMU/0x0xS1193...
yoava 10y ago
http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/ http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-...
doubleorseven 10y ago
http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/ http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-... * Grabs popcorn
drivingmenuts 10y ago
Can someone clarify? 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.
samFSM 10y ago
Reply from Wix. http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/ http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-...
samFSM 10y ago
Wix CEO open letter: http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/ http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-...
lightlyused 10y ago
Don't get me wrong, but doesn't the gpl allow for (or at least not stop) you to charge for the code? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html Couldn't wix just charge some ungodly sum and be done until someone ponies up the $$$?
- Crosseye_Jack 10y ago
  If you are granted access to the compiled version to a piece of software covered by the GPL then the GPL grants you the right to request source for that software. For Wix to do what you suggest would also mean they would have to price the compiled app out of range its intended audience would pay thus making the app pointless.
nextweek2 10y ago
A lot of people here are missing one of the core tenants of the GPL, in that any linked application must also be GPL. 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.

194 points by jaredtking 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

"Good artists borrow, great artists steal" 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/ 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/9f0e776c74ba9021cba6e1cdb7d8962131c507b8/WordPressEditor/src/main/java/org/wordpress/android/editor https://github.com/wix/WordPress-Editor-Android/tree/9f0e776... is pretty convincing.

tomdell 10y ago
He mentioned that you can look and see on GitHub that Wix explicitly forked Wordpress repositories. 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.
- otoburb 10y ago
  >>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.
  - charlesdm 10y ago
    I don't even understand what the point in doing this would be, given they're a publicly traded company. Seems like a very careless decision. If they liked the app, they should've just copied the concept and feel of the app but rewritten the actual code. That way the GPL license would not apply. How much would that cost? A few hundred thousand?
    - bdcravens 10y ago
      You're assuming this is a decision made by executives, as opposed to lazy developers.
      - marincounty 10y ago
        But isn't that why executives make the real money? They are suspose to make sure the developers aren't just copying/pasting code? Or, at least mention it a few times in one of their thousand meetings? (I'm just guessing. It seems like one of those companies--the company with endless cappuccino, sweet buns meetings.) And will the average customer of Wix even hear about this "lifted" code--no. Will they care--no. Do they know about open source code--no. Did I ever like Wix--no, but that doesn't matter. To budding web developers--there's still a lot of businesses/customers that need websites. Don't let companies like Wix take all the money. (I really don't like companies that use open source code, and then propriatize it.)
  - kevlened 10y ago
    Although it seems against the spirit of GPL, the GPL doesn't explicitly protect against code hosted as a service, so the wix website isn't in violation. That's why AGPL exists. IANAL, but their private fork (I couldn't find a public one on Github) is also technically permissible, as it's not a redistribution of the code. Edit: if what's in question are strictly web assets (images, js, etc), then I'm pretty sure, but not certain, this is a violation
    - charlesdm 10y ago
      But the app is? If they release a modified version of a GPL Android app, they would need to supply the source code, no? The Wix app would constitute a derived work.
      - kevlened 10y ago
        That seems fair. The GPL has a loophole for network-provided services, but apps are native.
        giancarlostoro 10y ago
        Correct, unless WordPress goes AGPL then Wix can keep their hosted code to themselves. However, the Android App which they should of made themselves will need to be open sourced or taken down and open sourced. The GPL if I remember correctly makes it so upon request (thinking of BMW) you must be able to provide access to the source code, even if you sell the product, that means that whoever buys a GPL'd product from you must also receive the code, but if they didn't buy your product there should be no reason for them to have it if I'm not mistaken. The GPL is interesting, and while not my first choice, it's definitely not a terrible choice.
        charlesdm 10y ago
        GPL is absolutely useless for commercial products, imo. Unless you can run it encapsulated on some sort of web service as a standalone executable. If the goal is to have more open source code, and more code sharing across systems and services then more code should actually be BSD licensed.
- labria 10y ago
  FYI: Wix open-sourced a ton of react-native stuff built internally to write the app in question: https://github.com/wix?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=react-native https://github.com/wix?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=react-native
pavlov 10y ago
How should he show code when the Wix app is closed source? His post mentions "icons, class names, even bugs". That seems damning (just ripping icons would be a copyright violation on its own).
- khedoros1 10y ago
  Well, any code that was built on top of GPLed code needs not to be closed source, in order to comply with the license that they accessed the code under.
  - pavlov 10y ago
    No disagreement there. Mathnerd314 asked for proof of stolen code, which of course is difficult to provide when we're talking about a closed source product. So the original authors must resort to indirect proof like comparing visuals and inspecting the binary.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
foolrush 10y ago
Reading the whole passage is much more illuminating than that misattributed drek that Jobs misquoted thanks, likely, to a poorly researched biography: “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
- pavlov 10y ago
  Did Eliot have something against the comma? Just wondering...
  - kwhitefoot 10y ago
    No, it's Goodreads that has mangled it; there is a better and complete version at Bartleby: http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw11.html http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw11.html. We turn first to the parallel quotations from Massinger and Shakespeare collocated by Mr. Cruickshank to make manifest Massinger’s indebtedness. One of the surest of tests 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 from that from which it was 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. Chapman borrowed from Seneca; Shakespeare and Webster from Montaigne. The two great followers of Shakespeare, Webster and Tourneur, in their mature work do not borrow from him; he is too close to them to be of use to them in this way. Massinger, as Mr. Cruickshank shows, borrows from Shakespeare a good deal. Let us profit by some of the quotations with which he has provided us— Massinger: Can I call back yesterday, with all their aids That bow unto my sceptre? or restore My mind to that tranquillity and peace It then enjoyed? Shakespeare: Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrops of the world Shall ever medecine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday.
segphault 10y ago
Matt links to the relevant GitHub repo in his blog post: https://github.com/wix/react-native-wordpress-editor https://github.com/wix/react-native-wordpress-editor 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_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  If they don't distribute it (SaaS only) then they do not need to publish anything.
  - bitJericho 10y ago
    That's not necessarily true. Some licenses consider html itself as protected code.
  - segphault 10y ago
    It's an iOS application. They are distributing it in the iOS App Store.
tptacek 10y ago
That code is about inspiration, not about literal theft.

chinese_dan 10y ago

So copyright infringement isn't 'theft', yet violating the GNU is theft? You can't download a car.... 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.

khedoros1 10y ago
GPL is Free as in "don't use this if you want to close it". 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.
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egwynn 10y ago
Your comment reads like you don’t understand either 1. the intention of the GPL (copyleft), 2. how it’s supposed to work (requiring derivative works to also be GPL), or 3. you don't think it’s legally enforceable (it is). 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.

z3t4 10y ago

The reason why someone would use something like Wix is that they don't have to deal with source code. So they wouldn't lose any business if they released their source code. They might even gain good will and popularity by doing so.

criddell 10y ago
It's not about customers, it's about competitors.
disordinary 10y ago
You mean they won't have to deal with hosting, 99% of Wordpress users don't look at the source code, same with Ghost, Drupal, Silverstripe, etc.
- z3t4 10y ago
  Do you think Wordpress would make more or less money if they where open/closed source ?
  - disordinary 10y ago
    I think they probably wouldn't be in business if they were closed source. They built a business on top of an open source product which already existed (but was created and maintained by the CEO of Wordpress) that open source platform allows them to claim that they run 25% of the internet with the consequent brand awareness and ecosystem.

ivraatiems 10y ago

If he had a case, he wouldn't be giving interviews about it. He'd be suing them. And he'd be right to do so. 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."

fencepost 10y ago
Very frequently the goal of licensing with the GPL and challenging violators is not financial gain (or punishment) but to force the violators to comply with the license and release the offending code. 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.
brazzledazzle 10y ago
Automatically suing every time you think you have a case does not seem like a smart move. Suing someone turns a disagreement into a war. Starting out with a blog post and escalating from there seems like a much more diplomatic and sensible approach.
morganvachon 10y ago
In cases like this, the court of public opinion can often be all that is necessary to resolve the issue and push the violator to do the right thing. This avoids costly litigation and makes things easier on both sides. If the violator chooses to ignore the public outcry, then certainly there is the legal path to follow next. 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.

mmaunder 10y ago

Back when blogging was just starting out, MovableType was the most popular platform. Written by Ben and Mena Trott, it was open source and written in perl. 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.

brazzledazzle 10y ago
How could they enforce the GPL against a company offering Wordpress as a SaaS application? This Wix app is different since it's a mobile app I believe. Unless WordPress uses a version of GPL that accounts for SaaS they couldn't do much about anything but someone offering on-prem solutions or actual apps right?

velmu 10y ago

So WordPress finally created something that can be reused outside of the walled garden in other competing projects. Yay! https://medium.com/@velmu/dear-drupal-and-wordpress-please-create-decoupled-components-d91b72267716#.bw2995nd7 https://medium.com/@velmu/dear-drupal-and-wordpress-please-c... 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/components https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/...

pebcakID10T 10y ago

I think it is a fitting punishment for those who copy parts of the Wordpress codebase in their product that they must now maintain Wordpress code in their product.

labria 10y ago

Wix developer replying: https://medium.com/@talkol/how-i-found-myself-accused-of-stealing-code-from-wordpress-a7350da9f9f2#.bgj085y0q https://medium.com/@talkol/how-i-found-myself-accused-of-ste...

benmarks 10y ago
What a perfect response. He evidently has cause to take Automattic to task, yet he turns the whole thing on its head for the benefit of Wix. Masterful.
jessaustin 10y ago
The WordPress GPL Rich Text component in question, is actually a wrapper around another Rich Text component named ZSSRichTextEditor which is licensed MIT. In retrospect it would have been easier to use it directly. 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.

avirambm 10y ago

CEO of Wix responded: http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/ http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-...

jessaustin 10y ago
What an airhead. It's all about feelings and impressions and mutual admiration! No, it's not about those things. You violated a license, and you got called on it. Fix your shit, apologize, and move on. Don't dump a PR load on us without bothering to learn and understand what you did wrong.
firasd 10y ago
About "everything we improved there or modified, we submitted back as open source", the GPL doesn't let you redistribute modified code and only release the modified code unfortunately. I guess "we will release the app you saw as well" may mean that they'd open source the whole app and thus be compliant. 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/0x0xS1193125-13-387285/1576789/filing.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-29IDMU/0x0xS1193...

yoava 10y ago

http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/ http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-...

doubleorseven 10y ago

http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/ http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-... * Grabs popcorn

drivingmenuts 10y ago

Can someone clarify? 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.

samFSM 10y ago

Reply from Wix. http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/ http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-...

samFSM 10y ago

Wix CEO open letter: http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/ http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-...

lightlyused 10y ago

Don't get me wrong, but doesn't the gpl allow for (or at least not stop) you to charge for the code? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html Couldn't wix just charge some ungodly sum and be done until someone ponies up the $$$?

Crosseye_Jack 10y ago
If you are granted access to the compiled version to a piece of software covered by the GPL then the GPL grants you the right to request source for that software. For Wix to do what you suggest would also mean they would have to price the compiled app out of range its intended audience would pay thus making the app pointless.

nextweek2 10y ago

A lot of people here are missing one of the core tenants of the GPL, in that any linked application must also be GPL. 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.