[wp-hackers] Bundled Plug-ins

[Andrew Nacin]

1. Akismet is free for personal use.

2. Regarding hiding the update nags for deactivated plugins: I've suggested
this before, but the explanation I received was enough to cause me to flip
my opinion completely. Some people will deactivate a plugin (or switch away
from a theme, I guess) specifically because they are waiting for an update.
I see no reason to offer an option in core to hide such nags. We want people
to stay current.

3. I really do like the idea of latest.zip being re-bundled whenever a new
version of Akismet or Twenty Ten is released. Feasible as Akismet is an
external, but not feasible for Twenty Ten as it is not. OTOH, tags should be
atomic, so I'm not really sure about whether it makes sense. I'll mention it
to some of the other core devs.

4. Akismet is a plugin, and that is why it is on plugins Trac/SVN instead of
core Trac/SVN. It is bundled, I grant you, because spam is a huge issue and
Akismet solved a very important need when it was introduced. Having it on
its own repository allows for its own release cycle. Twenty Ten is likewise
on themes SVN because it can have its own release cycle. (We'll likely be
releasing a new version soon that fixes some image styling issues, and works
around an IE9 bug.)