WordPress Dev Chat For 2-11-10

Quick update on the menu management progress
WooThemes is currently reconfiguring their menu management system into a patch that can be integrated into the core of WordPress. Once the patch is committed, everyone can try it out and weigh in with their concerns or improvements. The patch may be ready by some time next week. Expect to see a possible case study somewhere down the road on how a wp-based commercial business can work in harmony with core rather than competition.

Quick discussion on the best way for plugins to be explicit about which license they are under
This was quite a discussion but in the end, here is the end result. The Writing A Plugin Codex page has been updated to include a License: Slug as part of the standard plugin information header. The first restriction for getting into the repository has been reworded to say the following: Your plugin must be GPLv2 Compatible. Promotion of best practices which is an ongoing effort.

Now there was extensive talk regarding whether GPLv3 plugins are or are not allowed to be hosted in the repository. Many of the answers I saw said NO because GPLv2 is not compatible with GPLv3. Therefor, I put this information out on Twitter but I was reminded of the fact that this is not set in stone. It’s based on a bunch of assumptions which in my opinion, sums up the GPL pretty good. A bunch of assumptions. But unless I’m told otherwise, which is guaranteed to happen, I wouldn’t try hosting your GPLv3 plugin in the repository.

Update on schedule compliance
There is some UI stuff that needs to be taken care of between the Menu management patch and the WordPress Multi Site stuff. I think feature freeze will happen on Monday as per the dev schedule. You’ll need to review the log file for more details as it was hard to follow the conversation

Update on improvements to Extend for plugins
mdawaffe is currently the lead man implementing improvements for plugin authors. When asked what those improvements are, here is what he told me, expose some of the stuff locked behind the admin tab to everyone, feedback on why plugins were rejected, better tools for our plugin moderators, looking into how to better display multi authors. The feedback mechanism will also help with plugins that get suspended due to a violation. Ptah Dunbar brought up a good question that has been discussed on the hackers mailing list before regarding plugin authors having the ability to remove their plugins from the repo. Right now, their is no good mechanism to accomplish this.

License And Other Stuff
I highly encourage you to read the log file for this meeting, especially all the parts regarding licensing so that you can go as crazy as I did. Also read what happened after the meeting as the conversation is quite good.

How To Participate:

If you want to suggest a topic to be discussed at the next meeting, you can by visiting the WordPress development updates blog. If you would like to participate in the chat next week, install IRC or an IRC compatible client and connect to the following IRC server.

chat.freenode.net or any random server on the Freenode network and then join this channel at 3:30PM Eastern time or 20:30 UTC Thursdays. #wordpress-dev.