[wp-hackers] Development Process

[Craig]

Doug said:
"There needs to be a Dashboard widget that alerts blog owners to the fact
that DrDave has updated SK2, that Mark J.'s Subscribe To plugin has
patched a security hole, or that Skippy's Gravatars plugin now lets you
select between curl() and fopen()."

I don't disagree, however, not everyone has a dashboard, and most
people wouldn't know what to do with some of the updates or what they
mean. Example, I have not a friggin clue about curl() and fopen() and
whether or not it would be worth updating. This puts the onus back on
the plugin developers to properly document and inform their userbase,
which is often not something that happens. How many plugins are
created for a specific user (author, mostly) and then just released to
the wild with little or no support? Lots of them, I'm sure.

I don't have an answer on how to manage plugins, but I agree that this
is a necessary discussion.

Craig.