Sorry, maybe my understanding of "rip-off" is wrong (not native English speaker), I always seen it as a synonym to "theft" but that might be wrong.
I think what they want to focus on is not the editor itself but rather everything around it and where it's run. In typical startups, you try to focus on your core product, so reusing the editor from another project makes sense, as they don't mind the details about the editor itself.
