[wp-hackers] Discontinuing a plugin on WordPress.org

[Otto]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Nikola Nikolov <nikolov.tmw at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Ultimately I think that if there's a list of plugins that are no longer
> supported by their authors and are put up "for adoption" by other
> developers everyone could benefit(not sure if that's fair/possible?). Yes,
> you can just fork the plugin and upload it as a new one, but the users of
> the old plugin probably won't be aware that there's a new version of the
> plugin.
>

LOL. Honestly, every time the issue of adoption comes up for plugins, I
can't help but laugh a bit. :)

Plugin adoption is not a real issue, because there is nobody out there
actually wanting to adopt other people's code.

Seriously, nobody wants to do it. People keep asking why there is no
"for-adoption" list, and the answer is simply because it is not necessary.
There's no shortage of abandoned plugins, but there's a serious shortage of
caring wanna-be-parents for those plugins.

I can think of maybe 10 times that a plugin has been adopted. Total. Ever.
It just doesn't come up that often. The whole thing is a total non-issue
because the truth of the matter is that no coder really wants to take over
somebody else's code. It's a lot more fun to write your own code instead.
And when you're doing things for free, "fun" is your primary purpose.

If anybody wants to adopt a plugin and cannot get in touch with the author,
you can email the plugins team and they will facilitate the process or make
contact or whatever. But this virtually never happens. There's no need for
a list because it's not like we're swamped with requests or anything.

-Otto