Wordle: More Than Money Can Say

Josh Wardle invented a fun word game to play online for his girlfriend and she loved it.  So did her friends and family.  Josh opened the game up to the world and it caught on quickly - so fast that someone decided to try and make money off of it.  Zach Shakken took Wardle's Wordle and sold it as an app and got excited about how much money he was making.  But the internet got mad at Zach for stealing an idea and marketing it as his own.  Zach apologized for being a businessman in business doing business and if everyone just understood how business worked then the internet would be applauding him instead of throwing rocks.

Is Zach right - is taking an idea and "improving" it OK, is that how business works?  From the telephone to the light bulb, from Edison to Apple, ideas have been taken and modified and used to make money.  But Josh Wardle may have the last word and apparently that word is not "money".