[wp-hackers] WP Developer Edition

[deko]

>> Can we offer two or three different versions of WP?  Such as "Basic",
>> "Advanced", and "Developer Edition"?

> It's an open source product.  There can be as many versions of the project
> as anyone wants to maintain.  But that's the rub.  I'm not so sure you'll
> get buy in for maintaining a whole secondary version, meant only to add more
> advanced features than what is in the main path.  If you could ensure that
> you'll maintain that version from here on out, you certainly could make a
> Developers edition and it might catch on.

Sort of like "physician, heal thyself".  But I think WP is taking on new 
dynamics as a mainstream app.  The challenge is to accommodate bleeding-edge 
developers as well as pedestrian-level users.

> However, what might be even better is taking a look at the enhancements you
> want, and offering them to the trac in a way that integrates them into the
> current WP core.  If you can do that, can present your enhancements in a way
> that proves their benefit to a significant portion of the community, and if
> you submit clean code that performs this addition, there's a good chance
> that your code changes will be included in the core.  You could even include
> a switch that enables your 'Advanced' interface.  At that point, no one is
> maintaining two products, but one product with more features.  That's a much
> better world.

One thing I've learned when adding non-request-specific features is to always 
include an "off" switch.  Perhaps some features could be toggled on install. 
This would maintain version singularity while letting users opt out of stuff 
they don't want.

> Tie in your extra fields as tables keyed off of the core tables.
> That will give you forward compatiblity.

So you're suggesting having the plug-in add/remove tables on 
activation/deactivation?  I'm curious how other plug-ins do this.  Anyone know 
of any examples?