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About LinkBacksHehe k. I think I suggested looking at GitHub and learning from it in some devchat. Got one response saying I should do it myself =).Originally Posted by hallsofmontezuma
Kegger
Hehe k. I think I suggested looking at GitHub and learning from it in some devchat. Got one response saying I should do it myself =).
Tavern Regular
Hmmmm - this is a tricky one. Canonical is almost like being core, which means that in effect you lose a certain control over your project.
This is always a tricky one when your project cannot live entirely free of another.
Now, WP could become big enough that multiple distributions, for different needs, could come out from different suppliers. There have been a few minor examples out there, but nothing significant yet.
Imagine if, in the Linux world, Linus Torvalds decided to become involved in a Linux distribution? It would instantly become the distro to use in the eyes of almost everyone - even if for many it wouldn't be the best by any stretch of the imagination. Would it hurt Red Hat? A little, but probably not a huge amount.
I still think that WP needs pre-packaged distributions. The move towards canonical plugins brings the impetus towards creating others.
WPTavern Forum Admin
The distributions thing was brought up during Janes keynote on Saturday from WordCamp Atlanta and she said WordPress currently has no plans on offering different distributions like Linux.
My question is, if WordPress had lets say 5 different distributions, who then is going to maintain those distributions and keep them up to date and such with the core product? It sounds like in order to make that work, we would need canonical distributions of WordPress.
Tavern Regular
davecoveney,
I like your linux example. Currently, Linus writes very little of the modern kernel. Should he decide to endorse his "official" version, then Debian, Red Hat, etc and their derivatives would be deemed inferior by many, whether or not they really are, and many of the Linux distros would cease to exist, resulting in a loss of innovation.
WordPress contains both ideas and code from various plugins. If these various plugins are no longer being developed because of "official" versions, then we lose all that. Remember, until Automattic hired Andy Peatling a couple years ago, BuddyPress was a non-Automattic plugin.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Tavern Regular
Apples and Oranges. Linux distros are released by different companies and people. There isn't one big governing Linux body that releases everything.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Kegger
How people handle the twitter plugin problem in a social media world :p.
Tavern Regular
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For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Tavern Regular
Incidentally, I have to say that I believe a great deal in why the WordPress team are trying to implement canonical plugins - it's being done to try and make things simpler for the majority of users.
As Michael pointed out, there's no 'official' Linux distribution - the first was a kernel along with some GNU tools. And there's no point in the WordPress team necessarily creating different distributions - it would be up to third parties to do that. They would take the 'kernel' of WP and use it to build something better suited to certain clients. For instance, most of our business is with the news and media sector and in the enterprise sector. We have some pretty well defined plugins that we use. It's in our interests that they do well.
Automattic have a similar situation - they run the very big, very succesful and very nice to data-mine wordpress.com. They also provide support and consultancy services to large clients. They probably have a knowledgebase, and perhaps even a codebase, of preferred plugins. Many they've taken on-board. There's 100 or so themes and plugins they look after (and redistribute) meaning that any theme on WordPress.com is always up to date and usable on a WP distribution. They're not bleeding edge themes, but for most people... perfectly adequate.
It's in Automattic's interest to support certain plugins. They had plans for bbPress, and they had plans for BuddyPress... so they invested by hiring. This makes sense.
Similarly, any major distribution will have a serious interest in certain plugins being maintained once real businesses start to take form.
WordPress could well become one of the primary online publishing tools of the next decade. It's an enabling technology, just like Apache and PHP were before it. If WP becomes big then it will have an economy which will create jobs, make some people rich, and ruin some others. We're all at the whims of the market, key influencers and luck.
In the short term, you need the canonical support for your work to be at the forefront. In the longer term you just need to come to the attention of the people who your plugin best serves.
These are interesting times for online publishing. And most of us here are in very early. There's going to be a lot of opportunities. I don't think canonical plugins are a big risk to those outside of that set - they just establish a baseline of expectations.
WPTavern Forum Admin
If third parties took WordPress and created specialized distributions that performed specific tasks, I'm for that idea. I'm not for the WordPress team managing and developing different distributions. Not enough man power I think.
Tavern Regular
I have to say that I believe a great deal in why the WordPress team are trying to implement canonical plugins - it's being done to try and make things simpler for the majority of users.
davecoveney,
I would think you're right. It certainly makes it easier (but not necessarily better) for the user. If there are 100 random Twitter plugins, Twitter Tools, TweetMeme, and all you have to make a difficult choice not knowing how good each one is. With one official core Twitter plugin, you know that it's probably well written, maintained, and such. Of course then you lose any real power of choice, as well as never finding out that Twitter Tools and TweetMeme don't do the same thing.
As for different distros of WordPress, they already exist. There are "light" versions of WordPress, versions to work with PostGres, ...
I depend on a number of plugins on different sites I run and/or manage. Should any of them cease to exist because the developer decided it wasn't worth it anymore with everyone using the Core version, unless the Core version includes 100% of the functionality of all the potentially hundreds of plugins its replacing, import functionality for them all,... I'll be spending quite a bit of time replacing them. It just don't see giving people one "choice" as opposed to the choices offered by the free market as being worth it.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
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