[theme-reviewers] Redux framework may be dialing home

[Otto]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 3:16 PM, Dovy Paukstys <dovy at reduxframework.com>
wrote:

> Since I seem to have broken it, I've uploaded a "static" version of the
> stats we typically display on Redux.
> http://reduxframework.com/staticstats/  That's what we do with the data
> we gather. As I said before developers can append their "hash" to get a
> drill-down view of this data.
>
> Otto:
> Thank you for chiming in.
>
> While I may agree partially with your statement about themes I fear
> developers do more than WordPress originally designed it to do. That goes
> beyond a design or a blog, and so you find more powerful themes.
>
> Our theme framework is in no-way a theme framework. It is only an option
> framework. We provide a powerful interface to the settings API and that's
> it. We don't provide templates or anything of the like.
>
> Truly Redux is to be run as a plugin, but I do believe TGM is not
> permitted in WordPress.org themes, am I correct? If that was changed, then
> there is a very easy solution! But I fear we won't get to that today.
>
> We justify because we do not hide. We're completely wide open and the
> users have full choice and untraceable to the specific user. That's all it
> boils down to. That and we are a plugin that developers choose to use in
> their theme.
>
> Theme Developers know about the tracking. We have docs on it. We answer
> any support issues, and we let people view the data. There is no hidden
> agenda here.
>
> So what do you suggest?
>


Dovy,

What I'm suggesting here is that, as it stands, I can't see us allowing
themes to use your framework because of this tracking thing.

For example, TGM is mostly disallowed, as you say. And don't get me wrong,
TGM is a nice bit of code. Very powerful, easy to use. But it does things
that we don't agree with. Specifically, it has the capability of
auto-installing code without user intervention. It can install plugins from
outside our repository. If a theme does any of these things with it, then
that's cause for rejection. Themes can't have plugins be required, use the
external_url or the force_activation features, etc.

These are all off by default, and so that's fine, but even so it's one more
thing that is required to be policed. And if the reviewers are fine with
doing that extra policing, fine. Given my choice, TGM would still be
disallowed because it contains this capability at all.

Now, if a theme did tracking of this nature, by itself, then it would be
rejected by the current standards, opt-in or not. So, since we're
evaluating only the theme, and the theme includes the framework, then
including this sort of tracking in themes is grounds for rejection. Which
basically means that no theme in our directory can use your framework
without removing that code. So, you can make your code do whatever you
like, but we're going to have to disallow it if it does certain things or
contains certain code.

So, up to you in that case, but I would very much suggest making a version
of the framework without the tracking at all, for use by developers who
want their themes to be listed on WordPress.org.

-Otto
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