Though bear in mind that if Moxie had all code contributors assign copyright to him, then he has the right to waive the GPL when using that code with closed partners. Only if contributors keep their rights and publish in GPL do you iron-clad the GPL into the codebase, because now to sidestep your commitment to freedom you must go back and re-implement all the code whose copyright belongs to a contributor. So, GPL or no, there is scope for Moxie to renege and offer alternate licensing on OWS code to WhatsApp, but only if contributor code is either excised or copyright transferred. On 19 November 2014 09:15:04 GMT+00:00, Marco Pozzato wrote:

I just double checked:

- twitter: moxie wrote "it's the same code" - github: GPL3 license

That means that Whatsapp is going to open source their app: this is awesome!

Marco

-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

On 11/19/2014 11:15 AM, Marco Pozzato wrote:

I just double checked:

* twitter: moxie wrote "it's the same code" * github: GPL3 license

That means that Whatsapp is going to open source their app: this is awesome!

Probably not. Open Whispers has the right to dual license the code to any OSI-approved license (eg. BSD) for a 3rd party. https://whispersystems.org/cla/