Why is beetleblocks doing plagrisim?
BeetleBlocks is a Snap! mod and is created by bromagosa, Jens, ericr(Scratch username, member of the Scratch Team). So, they are allowed to do this and this is not piracy. In fact, projects made there can be migrated to Snap!. // cc @bromagosa
Yep, but even if we were not related to the Snap! team at all, Snap! is free software released under the AGPL and anyone in the world is allowed and encouraged to modify it, as long as they also license their modification under the AGPL.
In the free software world, copying and modifying each other's software is not "stealing" (*) or "plagiarizing", it's actually the very reason why we make free software, so others can copy it, inspect it and modify it!
(*) I would argue that copying could never be called stealing by anyone in their right mind, but that's another discussion. Stealing is taking something away from someone, while copying leaves the original unaffected, even more so when the copy is digital.
This is one of the subjects I teach, so I want to clarify a terminological issue.
Copyright violation is a legal concept that, in software terms, refers to redistribution of someone else's actual code without permission. As @bromagosa says, the software license we use for Snap! explicitly permits everyone to redistribute Snap! provided that any modified version must also be released on the same terms. The notion of copyright applies only to the actual code. Long ago Apple tried to sue Microsoft for copying the "look and feel" of the Macintosh user interface (things like ^C for Copy, ^V for Paste) and they lost in court.
Plagiarism is a moral concept that has to do with claiming credit for someone else's work -- pretending that it's your own work. It's a completely separate concept from copyright violation; you can illegally redistribute a copyright-protected work and still acknowledge whose work it is, or you can legally redistribute a public domain work (one that is not covered by copyright, which is not quite the same thing as free software that's copyrighted but freely licensed) while dishonestly pretending you wrote it yourself. Even free software fans want to be given credit for their work.
BeetleBlocks is not guilty on either count.