[wp-hackers] Simplicity in 2.next

[Owen Winkler]

Craig wrote:
> Very true, however there are many quality plugins that I know and trust that
> aren't on the repository. I guess the question is really how do we get the
> authors to move their stuff over to wp-plugins.org?

Regarding plugin hosting at wp-plugins.org:

There is no way for me to add new projects (a few line items relate to 
circumventing the manual email to photomatt to enable these repos).
I can't grant and deny access to my projects to other users.
I can't configure notifications (or any action) on svn commits.
Trac is cluttered with many commits, tickets, and wiki changes that are 
unimportant to people seeking information specifically about my plugin.
There is no email notification of new tickets.
There is no dedicated self-support forum located there for my plugin.
I get no traffic at my site for what plugins are hosted there.
I can't track downloads to monitor which plugins need the most attention.
I can't create private projects there, or restrict access to just the 
trunk for allowing access only to tagged versions.
Downloading of the plugins themselves may be difficult for visitors when 
the plugin consists of more than one file.
Providing clear version-specific downloads is difficult.
Abandoned projects are not culled, leaving my project to be found 
amongst dozens of dead or unfinished projects.
There is no directory of plugins.
There is no vetting of plugins that are included, in spite of some 
desire that there should be.

There are plenty of benefits, too.  Not having to host your own SVN, and 
providing all of the Trac features for tickets and wiki are pretty nice. 
  Unified login with WordPress.org support is nice.

Still, no amount of plugin repo gardening is going to convince me that 
hosting at wp-plugins.org (or any other simple download-only plugin 
repo) is better than hosting my stuff myself.  It bothers me to think 
that my own code won't be a part of the official plugin effort unless I 
submit to the restrictions listed above, which aren't really of much 
benefit to users of my plugins.

A suggested alternative has been to just dump the latest version of code 
hosted elsewhere into the repo, which dilutes the idea of where the 
official release comes from.  Am I the only one that doesn't download 
utilities from Download.com, instead making every attempt to find the 
company's own home page and official distribution point?

Mind you, this isn't a complaint expecting things to change, it's just 
an explanation of why it may be difficult to convince developers to all 
switch to using wp-plugins.org.

Owen