Tut tut tut… Has Wix, in the eyes of Matt Mullenweg been misbehaving? Image by Tasha Tuvango (via Shutterstock).
WordPress co-founder cries foul over theft of mobile app code by Wix
A while back, we at
Dreamkatcha web design created an advisory blog post telling you why you shouldn’t use Wix. In no less than ten bullet points (well, 21 in all), we stated how it was counterproductive to the success of your website. We are also underwhelmed by its clichéd designs and, worst of all, the fact that whole sites are built (almost entirely) with Adobe Flash. Which as technology goes, isn’t only obsolete. Google’s no fan of it either.
There could be a 22nd point to our 21 reasons why you shouldn’t plump for Wix (or other entry level sitebuilders). Theft.
Theft? Not in the sense they plunder your website and take it off their servers. WordPress’ Matt Mullenweg has accused the Israeli company of stealing open source coding elements without accrediting its sources. Some of you may remember this pearl of wisdom from your schooldays:
“The first time you make a mistake it’s an accident, the second time you make the same mistake it’s on purpose, and the third time you make that same mistake it’s no longer a mistake, it’s a habit.”
The ‘accident’ in question is the theft of coding from WordPress’ mobile app for the Wix mobile app. Including, as Mr. Mullenweg said, its glitches and bugs. With open source software, or any other works produced by similar means, it is the done thing to share and share alike. Any bug fixes are shared with the community behind any works. Photographs, if modified, may be shared alike.
Mullenweg has urged Wix to put their revised source code on Github, a great place for finding useful scripts. He said to Wix’s founder, “If you’re going to join the open source community, play by the open source rules.”
Avishai Abrahami, Wix’s founder and CEO used his company’s blog to hit back at Mullenweg’s accusations: “First, you say we have been taking from the open source community without giving back, well, of course, that isn’t true.” He backed up his response by adding links to 224 projects on his public Github page. He added: “You can see they are all dated before your post.
“We have not checked if WordPress is using them, but you are more than welcome to do so, some of them are pretty good.”
This could run and run for some time, but we at Dreamkatcha still deplore Wix and similar site builders. Your business deserves better.
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Dreamkatcha, 03 November 2016. 
