[wp-hackers] Plugin Updates not on WP.org

[Alex Hempton-Smith]

Hey all,
It was discussed a while ago about plugins being hosted on private websites
(non-WP.org), and still having the update functionality of WP.org hosted
plugins. For 2.8, would it be possible to perhaps have this functionality
added?

I was looking through 'update.php' and noticed that the WordPress update
script just checks against a URL, in this case on wordpress.org, but
couldn't we introduce an element into the main plugin header, where author
etc information is kept, with an alternative URL? That would mean the plugin
author could just upload a txt file perhaps which had the current stable
plugin version, which WP can check against instead of api.wordpress.org?

Any thoughts?

-- Alex