Wix CEO and Co-Founder Avishai Abrahami Hits Back at WordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg

In response to WordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg's allegations that the Wix app editor copied code from WordPress illegally, Wix co-founder and CEO Avishai Abrahami penned an informal and expressive open letter denying and clarifying their own reasons and practices in coding.

"Wow, dude I did not even know we were fighting," Avishai Abrahami said in the open letter, which has already been shared almost 3,000 times on social media as of the time of posting. This was in response to WordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg's recent statement that Wix habitually and liberally copied from WordPress. This heated statement came shortly after Wix launched their latest app, the user-friendly editor that allows for on the fly and real-time website management for users.

WordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg did not mince words in his statement, stating that the app editor's base code is a "blatant rip-off" and "code theft" unparalleled among their competitors. He also mentioned that Wix used to be known under the name Wixpress Ltd., which closely rhymed with his own content management system brainchild. Mullenweg claims that WordPress Automattic's team Alex and Maxim made the original commits to the Github code base which Wix developers forked to build their latest product offering.

This claim from WordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg makes the new product of Wix a violation of the open source license where attribution was not properly made to the WordPress developers in Automattic where the original code base originated. In their defense, Wix CEO and co-founder Avishai Abrahami explained in the open letter that they attributed the forked code used from WordPress properly in the Github repository and they added millions of lines of code for additional features.

Despite the hotly debated topic which also sparked numerous discussions in the tech community, Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami did end the open letter with a conciliatory note. Abrahami invited WordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg over for coffee to settle their differences regarding the code base issue.

Not an expert in the wix/ @photomatt  spat but pretty ballsy by Wix CEO to claim they never used Wixpress when it's all over Google search pic.twitter.com/3De3vfLxfo

— Evelyn Rusli (@EvelynRusli) October 30, 2016