Shackling a free market: WordPress canonical plugins

[samh]

I could be way off, but like you mentioned Andrea_r, from what I understand a justification is that when an inexperienced WordPress user looks for a plugin for particular Twitter functionality, they see Twitter Tools, TweetMeme, Twitter for WordPress, Twitter This, etc etc etc and could certainly be benefited should there be an Automattic TwitterPress plugin that is unlikely to be developed by someone who doesn't know what they're doing, abandoned, etc.

Guys, for what it's worth (and I'm really really really not up to speed with this whole thing at all!), I saw this comment and it reminded me of somthing similar in MU

Often I've looked around for MU compatible Poll plugins - and although some have worked at times, not all of them always work seamlessly all of the time. At my last attempt of checking, I posted some comments around and basically the Automattic Poll Tool, PollDaddy is what I went for. Because it works.

My concern is this - if everyone, in this instance, chooses PollDaddy then what's the point in developing another poll plugin that's compatible with MU?

I'm only using this as an example and, being perfectly honest, I've not checked since what is now available these days. However.....it does demonstrate my point. The introduction of PollDaddy could be considered to be stifling to the other developers.

Now I can't put that into a structured opinion as I don't know enough about the whole situation, but that is my two penneth worth as to the effect I've seen of an Automattic plugin on the market.

[Ryan]

My concern is this - if everyone, in this instance, chooses PollDaddy then what's the point in developing another poll plugin that's compatible with MU?

I can see this as a valid argument. But at the same time, the flipside could be that functionality like that is rolled into core instead, and then it would be a whole bunch worse as the plugin would be competing with something which the system can already do anyway.

Other CMS's roll everything they possibly can into core, WordPress doesn't. I guess this core plugin idea gets around that be leaving officially supported plugins as exactly that, a plugin, but makes sure that users know exactly where to look for that ninja-awesome plugin which is guaranteed to work and never breaks on upgrades.


I'm still kinda on the fence on the whole issue.

The one thing I am glad to see, is that certain functionalities are being rolled out of core and into plugins. I like that a lot, as long as those plugins are officially supported ... which I guess is sort of the point of core plugins ... oh jeeze, now I have no idea what I think.

I'm confused even about my own opinion of the matter.


To be honest, the likes of myself and Michael Torbert are probably the last people anybody should be looking to for their opinion on this sort of thing of course as we both have commercially vested interests in the plugin eco-system. The community should always go ahead of business interests (although obviously sometimes business interests are for the benefit of the community).

[andreasnrb]

I have yet no commercial plugins and when I do they will never compete with any core plugins. So I consider myself fairly objective.
I've been reading the two "old" discussions on wp-hackers list and the ideas presented there are more similar to Chip Bennets ideas. Also the common thread on core plugins was moving stuff out of core and into a plugin.
Also the idea of distributions were also mentioned in 2.9 features poll result post. But then it was like wp.org should have distributions. Maybe this was the thoughts behind different user manuals on wp.org. WP.org releasing distros is even worse than the current idea of core plugins.

Since I can hardly find any discussions on this anywhere I must assume that all major and minor discussions on canonical/core plugins must have taken place on WordCamps.

[davecoveney]

Let's look at the polls question...

For many users PollDaddy is perfectly adequate, but our magazine and enterprise clients need to have polls stored internally.

So we use WP-Polls. Lovely plugin. But if his interest were lost because of PollDaddy then people who find the functionality and ongoing support for the plugin should help encourage Lester or others to continue with it. One way might be to pay him :-)

Seriously, I've nothing against core functionality or plugins, but it changes the landscape a little. Automattic sponsor a lot of WP development - other companies can do the same. We intend to do just that as we grow. Today we're still a small business, but we're bigger than most in the WP world. But this year we'll probably double in size and then we can put more into WP in order to get more out.

All I see here, really, is not controversy, but growing pains. WP is turning into something serious now.

[andreasnrb]

Well if Automattic promoted the stuff on their own homepage then there would be no problem.
But the idea that there should be a core plugin with PollDaddy integrated sends shivers down my spine.
WordPress should be the foundation upon which we can build stuff. WordPress should not come in a complete package with everything under the same label WordPress. Corepses no corepses. They should go back to the drawing table on this.

[aaroncampbell]

I think davecoveney says it pretty well. There will always be people that need something different, so there will always be a need for regular plugins...even ones that "compete" with core plugins.

It's true that Automattic funds a lot of WordPress development. It's in their best interest as a company that the project succeed. Other companies can do the same thing. One of my plugins, Efficient Related Posts, was something that a specific client needed. They pay me regularly for support on it, and other certainly could as well. Actually, if that were to happen I'd probably start releasing the rest of my plugins (ones that I haven't released because I can't support them all and still work enough to pay the bills).

The growing pains will all be over soon, and hopefully people are happy with the end result.

[aaroncampbell]

But the idea that there should be a core plugin with PollDaddy integrated sends shivers down my spine.

Just to stop any FUD before it spreads, there has been NO TALK of this happening. As a matter of fact, they have talked about removing Akismet from the core distribution, and making a spam control plugin that allows you to use akismet, TypePad AntiSpam, or a number of other options as the backend.

[andreasnrb]

It was not my idea. It was Jeffs on Twitter. I replied it was better to have a plugin which could be extended to use different services. Not come with services integrated.

All this FUD will happen if you don't go with a formalized approach as per Chips suggestion. Since who can we listen to really? Matt had to step in and say it was an experiment. This was never mentioned by anyone. Not even in the Canonical Plugin name poll which wasn't really necessary since the name had already be chosen. And if the results differed the Core Plugin name would still have been used.

I still like the optional modules that Mike Schiller talked about on Wp Hackers. A common API for doing different things etc.
Then I want dependency support. Rewritten upgrade checking. Perhaps library/framework support so developers can be sure that certain files are loaded before plugins.

And I like the team things that has been spoken about. Will never like the core plugins as they have been presented. And I don't like the hybris that has been shown and the lack of understanding for bad coders. What are they to do when the resources are not that good.
Ozh complained about people using multiple optionsfield instead of one in the plugin competition and totally ignoring that this is nowhere to be found in the codex.
The code standard and security of plugins would go up if there were better resources in place.

[aaroncampbell]

It was not my idea. It was Jeffs on Twitter. I replied it was better to have a plugin which could be extended to use different services. Not come with services integrated.

As long as it continues to get talked about as just an idea, I'm happy. I just don't want things escalating like they have been.

... Not even in the Canonical Plugin name poll which wasn't really necessary since the name had already be chosen. And if the results differed the Core Plugin name would still have been used.

That's a ridiculous claim to make and one that clearly can't be proven in any way. No one knows what would have happened if the results were different.

[andreasnrb]

That's a ridiculous claim to make and one that clearly can't be proven in any way. No one knows what would have happened if the results were different.

There was no need to have a poll even. Why have a poll on the names but not the concept? Why not ask for feedback from community on the idea instead of name suggestions?

About the name: "Core plugins" was not chosen by poll.