Wix gets caught “stealing” GPL code from WordPress

Last Friday, Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg—the founding developer of the WordPress open supply blogging and content material control platform—published an open letter on his private weblog accusing the builders of running a blog website, Wix, of essentially stealing WordPress code for a new cell application:

If I had been charitable, I’d say, “The app’s editor is based on the WordPress mobile app’s editor.” If I have been sincere, I’d say that Wix copied WordPress without attribution, credit, or following the license. The custom icons, the class names, and even the insects. You can see the forked repositories on GitHub entirely with authentic commits from Alex and Maxime,  developers on Automattic’s mobile team. Wix has always borrowed liberally from WordPress and their business enterprise name, Express Ltd.—but this blatant code theft is past something I’ve seen before from a competitor.

WordPress’s code is open source. However, it’s miles published under the GNU Public License (GPL). And how Wix used the code, Mullenweg said, violates mobile app; he reused WordPress’s textual content editor without credit. And the Wix utility turned into closed and proprietary—not posted under the same GPL license. Wix CEO and co-founder Avishai Abrahami fired again, writing in an open response to Mullenweg, “Wow, dude, I did not even recognize we have been fighting.” Abraham pointed to 224 initiatives that Wix had open-sourced on GitHub, and he admitted that Wix had used the textual content editor code—making some adjustments and sharing the code through GitHub:

wordpress
Sure, we did use the WordPress open-source library for a minor part of the utility (this is the concept of available supply proper?). The entirety we advanced there or modified, we submitted again as open-source; see here on this hyperlink – you ought to test it out; it is quite a cool way of using it on mobile native. I think you men can use it along with your app (and it’s far open source, so you are welcome to use it without spending a dime). And, by the manner, the element we used was, in reality, advanced through every other and changed with your aid.

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Abraham becomes alluding to the use within the WordPress textual content editor of code at the beginning published as open-source under the extra permissive MIT public license, as Wix developer Tal Kol stated explicitly in a follow-up submission on Medium. Kol noted that the code was developed and tried to collaborate with WordPress engineers—porting the Automattic, GPL-licensed editor to the React native JavaScript platform for mobile apps. After a prototype became ready in June, Kol defined, he tweeted a link to the code to Automattic’s engineering group. Still, he failed to get a reaction until October 28, when Mullenweg referred Wix out for a GPL violation.

The problem for Wix is that while it may very well have open-sourced the aspect it constructed the usage of WordPress’ editor—which Kol says became, in turn, made the use of any other editor certified beneath the extra permissive MIT open supply license—the agency then posted the element as part of commercially accredited software program.

That movement violates both the spirit and the letter of the GNU Public License, which requires something built with GPL-licensed code to be distributed with an equal GPL license. By adding the GPL-licensed editor module code to its software, Wix located its complete cellular utility underneath the GPL license Icas Network scope.

“I suppose from what I recognize, it’s a quite conventional GPL violation,” stated Matt Jacobs, VP and preferred to recommend at Black Duck software program. This agency is centered on helping developers get insight into whether or not code underneath GPL license or different open supply licenses has been incorporated into their code. “To date, it appears to observe a quite normal line of development.”

While agencies include GPL-certified code into their programs, Jacobs explained, they take on some of their duties as a result. “One of those obligations is that in case you’re going to embed GPL stuff to your code and bring a spin rip scam product, you must make that rip-off compliant with GPL—either via transport the code with it or presenting the code on request.”

Abraham’s response that Wix has posted lots of its code as open supply doesn’t change that truth. “Wix [is] releasing code over right here and pronouncing, ‘that makes us accurate men,'” Jacobs explained. “However, the GPL and the community don’t say that you’re compliant if you release sufficient other code. They’re dancing around the primary problem.”

This isn’t always an extraordinary occurrence. One of the reasons why many organizations have prevented GPL-certified software programs is the worry of contaminating their intellectual assets with GPL-certified code. However, Jacobs told Ars, “Many, many companies are doing this whether or not they understand it or not.”

Kol, Abraham, and Wix might also now be absorbing that lesson. “I know some builders are fearful of the use of GPL, reputedly for a quite precise motive,” Kol wrote. Noting that WordPress’s GPL-certified editor is based on the MIT-licensed ZSSRichTextEditor, he stated, “Looking back, it would have been easier to apply it at once.”