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From the lead developer: https://medium.com/@talkol/how-i-found-myself-accused-of-stealing-code-from-wordpress-a7350da9f9f2#.wym6nvgmv https://medium.com/@talk
by mbesto 10y ago
From the lead developer:
https://medium.com/@talkol/how-i-found-myself-accused-of-stealing-code-from-wordpress-a7350da9f9f2#.wym6nvgmv https://medium.com/@talkol/how-i-found-myself-accused-of-ste...
> I know some developers are scared of using GPL, apparently for a pretty good reason. 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.
https://github.com/nnhubbard/ZSSRichTextEditor https://github.com/nnhubbard/ZSSRichTextEditor
https://github.com/wordpress-mobile/WordPress-Editor-iOS https://github.com/wordpress-mobile/WordPress-Editor-iOS
So, Wix built a wrapper for a GPL piece of code, which was just a wrapper for a MIT piece of code. According to this tweet[0], the only thing Wix needs to do is to assign a GPL license to their code...but alas IANAL.
[0] - https://twitter.com/nitrogen/status/792486850845773824 https://twitter.com/nitrogen/status/792486850845773824
EDIT - From the OP's blog:
> When you embed and use GPL code, you have to release the entire thing as GPL. (That’s why it’s called a viral license.) So they need to release not just their changes to the editor, but the entire app that was distributed.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- alanh 10y ago> I’ve spoken to some [WordPress] engineers… They even gave me a WordPress T-Shirt. OK, that sounds like permission to violate the GPL to me! Edited to add: My sarcasm would be dickish if either of these guys from Wix actually addressed the core issue instead of responding with nothing more substantial than “But I thought we were friends!”
- g00gler 10y agoIf he's calling the people who work on WordPress engineers he could probably plead ignorance.
- edsouza 10y agoThe WordPress-Editor-iOS GPL license should be invalid, because it includes the sources from the ZSSRichTextEditor project which is MIT licensed. Which specifically has a clause: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. edit: reading the readme.md in the WordPress-Editor-iOS project, they list the following projects that were used in the codebase: ZSSRichTextEditor (License MIT) CYRTextView (License MIT) HRColorPicker (License BSD) jQuery (License MIT) JS Beautifier (License MIT) Instead of retaining of the licenses for the projects. They removed the licenses, and replace it with the GPL license. IANAL - I think that is not how you re-license someone elses project.
- protomyth 10y agoAre you saying that someone took MIT licensed source code, removed the copyright, and then licensed it under GPL? [edit: I guess with your edit that is exactly what you are saying, so how can it be legal to pull that stunt?]
- firasd 10y agoYou can include MIT & BSD libraries in a GPL-licensed app but you can't include the resulting GPL work back into an e.g. BSD-licensed app. Same as you can include jQuery in a proprietary app which has its own license.
- davexunit 10y ago>> When you embed and use GPL code, you have to release the entire thing as GPL. (That’s why it’s called a viral license.) So they need to release not just their changes to the editor, but the entire app that was distributed. Incorrect. Your code can be licensed under MIT Expat, Apache 2, whatever, but you must still respect the terms of the GPL which means providing the complete, corresponding source code.