[wp-hackers] Plugin Site

[Tor Bjornrud]

On Jul 16, 2004, at 3:56 PM, Deirdre Saoirse Moen wrote:

> On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Tor Bjornrud wrote:
>
>> Respectfully, I think having a system that relies on everybody being
>> the sole provider of their "open code" not only defeats the purpose of
>> Open Source, it ends up making a fragile network of available plugins.
>> In no way is it reasonable, in my opinion, to have people committing
>> Open Source changes to a OSS project and expect to act as if it's not.
>
> The problem here is that it has been an established tradition; changing
> that tradition can harm relationships. Harming relationships with 
> existing
> WP developers is not in WP's best interest.

What you say is an established tradition, I merely see as a project 
that the WP community hasn't gotten around to yet.  It's my 
understanding that things work this way not because of an agreed upon 
decision to keep plugins separately hosted, but merely the most 
convenient way of distributing them with the least amount of work (at 
that time).  Given the popularity of WordPress, and the vast wealth of 
plugins now available to it, the value of a consolidated plugin library 
is now much more clear and present than ever before.

I fully agree that harming relationships is in nobody's best interest, 
but we certainly have to balance people's wishes with protecting the 
project longevity and making it as easy as possible for WP users to 
extend their setup.  I don't see everybody walking away from this 
completely satisfied, simply because we have differing extremes.


> My personal choice would be a compromise:
>
> 1) People who prefer to host their plugins on WP's page can do so.
> 2) People who would prefer to host their own plugins, for whatever 
> reason,
>    can do so, but should offer a copy up for the WP plugin page,
>    including any updates to said plugin. This copy would not be shown 
> on
>    the WP page *unless* the primary site was unavailable for an 
> extended
>    period and the developer had not offered a change of location.
>
> I'd say a reasonable time for 'extended period' is two weeks, though, 
> as
> with anything, that's debatable.
>

I'm a bit confused as to #2. Is this period a timeframe from the 
beginning of the offering of the plugin?  Where if the developer keeps 
the plugin hosted for the "period" WP will host it indefinitely?  Or 
are you envisioning something where the plugin will be hosted as long 
as the developer's site stays alive for a two week period, and if it 
goes down, the plugin will be temporarily disabled?

Best,
~Tor