[wp-hackers] Re: Simplicity in 2.next

[Robert Deaton]

Personally, I am still failing to see the purpose behind "Plugin
Gardeners." Much of the argument for them has been that many plugins
are old and unmaintained, so sure, it sounds like a great idea for
some talented authors to fix them. But what about releases? If the
plugins are as unmaintained as it sounds to the point where an author
can't be contacted to fix his or her own plugin, what point is there
in even committing fixes to the plugin itself, unless the WordPress
team is going to come out and say here's a list of plugins and the
downloads for them that are fixed for the next version of WordPress,
and are not guaranteed by the original author. Not only does this
worsen the load on plugin gardeners because suddenly people think that
along with the re-release of these plugins, it means they will get
some real support, but also that we now have irritated plugin authors
upset because, like mentioned before, we stole their traffic.

If there is something obvious I'm missing here, please let me know, as
this sounds like an idea I would like to love, but it has too many
problems to be a solution in itself to a much simpler problem.

--
--Robert Deaton
http://somethingunpredictable.com