[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #14179: Theme asking to update (theme with same name on WordPress.org)

[WordPress Trac]

#14179: Theme asking to update (theme with same name on WordPress.org)
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 Reporter:  design_dolphin  |       Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)    |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:  WordPress.org
Component:  Themes          |     Version:
 Severity:  normal          |  Resolution:
 Keywords:                  |     Focuses:
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Comment (by grapplerulrich):

 Thank you @dingdang for spending time thinking up a solution.

 The main issue is with the author name. The author name is the style.css
 can anything and the theme author could change this text whenever they
 wish. WordPress.org knows who the theme belongs to from the uploader
 process and not from the `style.css`.

 We have at times have theme transferred from one account to another and
 then the new owner has changed the author information in the `style.css`.

 A common method that most package manager use is to have the developer's
 name and then theme or plugin name. So `grapplerulrich/mytheme`.

 We could fix the problem with the active installs this way. There may be a
 small drop in active installs for those users who are still using the old
 version. Potentially in the future we could track the user changes.

 This would not work for the updates untill we have a full list of author
 name changes.

 The code that handles this is WordPress.org and I don't think yet public.

 There is a bit of uncertainty for the future as there is plan to parse the
 readme file in themes.

 If we look at the plugins headers the author's name can be any text and
 the contributors are defined the readme file and they need to match the
 w.org usernames. I expect that same to happen for themes. The author text
 in the `style.css` can be your full name and the w.org username defined in
 the readme.

 When we will be able to parse the readmes then a theme could have multiple
 owners.

 We would need to check with the #meta team if there is a way to have list
 of related usernames for a user.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/14179#comment:42>
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