When Open Source Goes Bad - SocialWebCMS guilty of copyright infringement

SocialWebCMS has been caught in the past taking code from the awesome Open Source project Pligg CMS and calling it their own. This time they have been caught taking
commercially copyrighted material and again are passing it off as their own. While browsing through their website I found they were offering a module very similar to one Pligg
offers only through their premium shop.

Since I had purchased the module in question from Pligg I decided to download the one SocialWebCMS is offering for free to see if was any better. I was shocked at what I had found.

SocialWebCMS has become so desperate to be relevant, they had to stoop to the level of buying copyrighted material from their competitor, change one word, and then distribute it for free.

From the readme file and a quick search of the Pligg forums proves this commercial module was released on AUG 20th 2008

A look at the SocialWebCMS module's readme says it was released on Sept 5th 2008. 16 days after Pligg made this module available.

Lets look at the structure of both these modules.

First we see the Original Copyrighted Commercial Pligg Module below

Now lets take a look at the stolen module from SocialWebCMS

Lets look inside that template folder of the Pligg Module and see what's in there!

Now lets look inside the template folder for the stolen SocialWebCMS module.

Anyone seeing a pattern?

It couldn't be a coincidence could it?

So lets compare a line of code from 2 files.

Line 14 from quick_submit_ini.php

module_add_action_tpl('tpl_pligg_above_center', quick_submit_tpl_path . 'quick_submit_index.tpl');

Line 14 from easy_submit_ini.php

module_add_action_tpl('tpl_pligg_above_center', easy_submit_tpl_path . 'easy_submit_index.tpl');

There you go folks. They changed the word QUICK to EASY and think that this permits them to violate copyright. They even went so far as to release it as open source under the Affero GPL license. The original work was not.

According to WHOIS SocialWebCMS is owned by:

Damon Wirth ashdigg@gmail.com

123 N Main St
Rockford, Illinois 61103
United States

815-123-4567

A search on Google Maps shows this to be a parking garage.

Maybe that is Mr Wirth there selling HotDogs?

I hope Pligg LLC sues the shit out of these guys. From my research I've learned that they are a group of disgruntled douchbags that were banned from the Pligg forums over a year ago for causing disruptions, spamming other members, and for being huge dicks. They thought it would be smart if they started their own fork. From what I can gather, none of them even know how to write code. They took an old version out of Pligg's SVN, removed the copyright and changed the donation links then called it their own. Anyone that uses SocialWebCMS is at great risk of having your site hacked cause the code base they are using is very outdated and totally unsecured. 

Also you might want to stay away from their website. It's hosted on a lame shared server and has been hacked with viruses many times already. For a period of time Google even banned the listing because visiting the site would harm your computer. Firefox still gives me this warning about once a week.

UPDATE:

I emailed Pligg to let them know of my findings. I received the following reply.

Thank you for contacting Pligg LLC. 

We are aware of the situation and are taking the appropriate legal steps in this matter.

SWCMS caught again

It's been a while since I've posted about the group of people that got together and decided to take an open source project, rename it and call it their own. Even solicit donations from people for code they are not responsible for. 

Today they posted their ROADMAP or I should say BackMAP because they still are stealing code and ideas from the popular content management system Pligg. 

Social Web CMS which uses the blog SocialWebCMS as it's mouth piece. Reported more lies today when it posted a piece about how they are going to go forward with the project. It just so happens that Pligg already went the same direction a few days ago. Now Social Web CMS and SocialCMSBuzz  have both accused the Pligg Project of taking ideas and (open source code) from them in the past. We've already proven this to be false. They are nothing but a group of liars. 

Pligg added roughly 60+ module hooks to their software. Making it much easier for developers to create and add features to the system. This was days ago. Now today SWCMS has decided to do the same thing. Yet they are the ones screaming copyright infringement. (Even though both are GPL) 

SWCMS or Social Web CMS is nothing more than a bunch of unorganized kids attempting to clone a larger group of people's hard work.  There is nothing original. The road map they released tonight proves it. 

My recommendation is to stick with Pligg. SWCMS will try and tell you that pligg is not even in development anymore. This is another lie. Pligg even had a twitter feed which tells you all aspects of development. Available from http://twitter.com/pligg  Believe me. It's several times a day. Not like these rip off artists over at socialcmsbuzz, ydac, swcms, or what ever they are calling themselves this week. 

I spent Sunday morning going though the social web cms website and the accompany blog socialcmsbuzz.com blog and was just astonished by the down right lies this group is trying to perpetrate. From reading the pligg source code and the social web cms code I've come to the realization that Pligg's lead developer sabotaged the code base before he left pligg. Leaving them with serious security vulnerabilities in earlier versions. This is probably the worst thing the lead developer Ashdigg could have done since all subversion changes are logged with date and time. This guy would never be hired at my firm.I can't find anything to back this up on the Pligg blog or forums, but I would think it's safe to say that Ashdigg was fired from Pligg. It only makes sense. His code sucked bad enough that Pligg paid a security consultant to check over his code. This tells me some bad blood was going on which probably resulted in the firing of Ashdigg. I wouldn't recommend using SocialWebCMS unless you want some serious problems. I'll stick with Pligg.

Social Web CMS Sucks

So tonight a came across a website called socialcmsbuzz.com which touted a revolutionary new social web content management system. I downloaded and installed it to my server. It turned out to be Pligg.

I couldn't believe these guys were trying to pull this shit. I was shocked to read his blog and see that they do nothing but mother fuck pligg at the same time while trying to promote their software, which is nothing but pligg with the name changed. Even the install screen says Pligg 9.9.0. Outrageous

It's a scam.

So I did some digging around in this amazing new code and found out that it still even connects to Pligg on the installation. These fucking idiots were even too lazy to change that. I guess there are shitbags born everyday, and Social Web CMS seems to be it.

It would be like a guy with a blog called "Steve CMS Buzz" took Wordpress , changed the name, and attempted to distribute it as "StevePress".

This code was stolen from Pligg by a group of douchbags that think they can pass it off as something new. They think that putting down the famous Open Source project Pligg, they can claim fame by distributing old source code under a different name. Stick with Pligg. Be safe. Be cool. These "Social Web CMS" posers are using old SVN versions which have multiple security vulnerabilities.

Step 1 Take one of the most popular content mangement systems on the internet.
Step 2 Change the name, and push all donation links to your shitty blog.
Step 3 Publish as many lies as possible, putting down CMS you just stole.
Step 4 Profit Profit Profit