[wp-hackers] WordPress plugin update bugs

[Travis Snoozy]

On Mon, 1 Oct 2007 17:11:46 -0500, Stephen Rider
<wp-hackers at striderweb.com> wrote:

> +1 on this.  From a user standpoint this is messed up, as WordPress  
> _seems_ to check all plugins for updates, but silently is _not_  
> checking many of them.
> 
> We need to either allow plugins not directly hosted at Wordpress  
> (including non-GPL) to play, or make it clear within the interface  
> which plugins are being checked and which are not.  As configuration  
> problems can prevent even WP hosted plugins from being checked, I  
> would think _both_ suggestions should be pursued.
>
> I understand the desire to champion open-source licensing, but  
> putting that _before_ usability seems like some skewed priorities to
> me.
<snip>

It's comparativley easy to check for updates when they're all
in one central place. I doubt that there was any specific pre-meditated
attempt at prejudicing non-hosted plugins or non-GPL'd plugins. It's
most likely that all of this was an oversight in light of a seemingly
straightforward feature. Unfortunately, things are almost never as
straightforward as we'd like them to be. ;)

That said, non-hosted plugins and plugins that can never be hosted just
won't work with the system as it stands. A separate update registry
open to everyone is probably a Good Thing; WordPress hosted plugins
should just automatically integrate with it, and third parties would
need to keep it up to date manually. It'd probably wind up being
similar in function to <http://www.wp-plugins-db.org/>.

But, being such a server-side-dependent thing, it's probably not going
to be an easy thing for everybody to participate in development-wise. :/


-- 
Travis 

In Series maintainer
Random coder & quality guy
<http://remstate.com/>