It is still unclear as to whether his statement means the company will release the entire mobile app under the GPL or not.
Mullenweg wix wordpress code#
“If you need source code that we have, and we have not yet released, then, most likely we will be happy to share, you only need to ask,” Abrahami said. Abrahami did not address the requirement that the entire mobile app be released as GPL but offered a vague statement about sharing code. GPL compliance, however, requires more than a show of open source spirit. And, by the way, the part that we used was in fact developed by another and modified by you. I really think you guys can use it with your app (and it is open source, so you are welcome to use it for free). Yes, we did use the WordPress open source library for a minor part of the application (that is the concept of open source right?), and everything we improved there or modified, we submitted back as open source, see here in this link – you should check it out, pretty cool way of using it on mobile native.
His artful deflection avoids the licensing issue completely and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the GPL:
Mullenweg wix wordpress software#
He cited Wix’s manifold contributions to open source software on the company’s GitHub account and their admiration of WordPress’ commitment to giving back. “Wow, dude I did not even know we were fighting,” Abrahami said. Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami responded the next day on the company’s blog with a tone that imposed an artificial sense of fraternity in order to make the original allegation appear to be an over reaction. Mullenweg’s open letter to Wix took the company by surprise. “If you’re going to join the open source community, play by the open source rules.” Wix CEO Responds, Neglects to Address GPL Licensing Issues “If you want to close the door on innovation, Wix, that’s your decision to make - just write your own code,” Mullenweg said. Mullenweg called for Wix to release its entire mobile app under the GPL, as required by the license, and make the source code available so that others can build on it and learn from it. And Wix took those improvements, used them in their app but then stripped out all of the important rights that they’re not legally allowed to take away.” “Instead, Wix took our version of the editor which has 1000+ original commits on top of the original MIT editor, that took more than a year to write. “You’d probably be in the clear if you had used just the original editor we started with (ZSSRichTextEditor, MIT licensed),” Automattic’s General Counsel Paul Sieminski commented on the issue. That code was not legally available to be repurposed without following its license. Wix distributed GPL code without respecting its license, putting new limitations on it instead of preserving its freedoms. Some took issue with use of the term “stolen code” in connection with public, open source repositories, but the effect is the same regardless of Wix’s intention. “Your app’s editor is built with stolen code, so your whole app is now in violation of the license,” Mullenweg said.
Mullenweg wix wordpress license#
Open sourcing the entire app’s code under the GPL is the only way to resolve the license violation, according to Mullenweg.
“If I were being honest, I’d say that Wix copied WordPress without attribution, credit, or following the license.”Įven though the Wix app is made up of different modules and libraries, the GPL requires that the entire application be GPL-licensed since Wix is distributing the app with GPL code in it. “If I were being charitable, I’d say, ‘The app’s editor is based on the WordPress mobile app’s editor.’ Mullenweg said. He identified two repositories that Wix forked in order to bring the GPL-licensed WordPress Rich Text Editor into its app.
Over the weekend WordPress co-creator and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called out Wix for copying GPL code from the WordPress mobile app and distributing it in its proprietary app.
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