When WordPress plugin adoption goes wrong

I love reading Mika Epstein’s stories about her dealings with plugin developers, but never thought I’d be writing something similar myself. And, like Mika, I’m going to keep this anonymous, albeit you’d probably be able to find the details with a little digging

First, let’s rewind. Back in November I some of my plugins up for adoption. Soon after, a developer approached me wanting to take one of them on. His credentials were good and he seemed appreciative of the opportunity to take the code over.

I switched things over to him and, all done, I walked away, happy to have given him the proverbial keys. In this case, ownership of the SVN report on wordpress.org as well as transferring my Github repo to him. The latter of which included a reasonably sized issues log of requested enhancements, as well as bug fixes.

But, a couple of months later, it turned oddly sour.

What went wrong? Well, let me highlight the plugin guidelines for a hint…

Per copyright restrictions, you must retain their credit in the code. We recommend you also leave them listed as a contributor.

Plugin handbook

After pushing out a number of revisions, the new developer suddenly removed me as a listed contributor (which is part of the README). I’m not bothered about having credit in the code, but listing me as a contributor was something I did want.

Assuming good intentions, I emailed the developer using the same email address that we’d used previously to converse. I asked him, politely, to re-instate what was required, even providing him with an example of the README line that was required. What was odd was that the contributor meta had been removed entirely – not just my name, but his too – so assuming this had occurred accidentally made the most sense.

He’d been really quick responding previously, always within a day, but a few days later and there’s been no reply. Maybe he wasn’t a regular reader of email or maybe, previously, he’d been using an email address that he doesn’t use very often. Maybe he was just on vacation (there had been no recent plugin changes made or support forum activity). So, I added an issue to the Github repo, again politely requesting that the meta be re-instated.

A little over a week later, I emailed the Plugin Review team about it. Even at this point I was still assuming good intentions, despite the fact that he was now responding to users request in the plugin support forum, hoping they could nudge the developer in some way that I’d not succeeded at.

6 days go by and I notice he’d pushed out a change to the plugin, but still no contributor meta. So, he was still making code changes, but not the one requested. At this point I take my next course of action – I put a request (still polite) in the plugin support forum, as I knew he was reading and replying to people there…

Hi!

I’m the original developer of this plugin, and you kindly adopted it from me.

However, you have removed me from the list of contributors, which is listed in the README header. As a contributor to the plugin, I should be included, and is part of the guidelines on wordpress.org.

Can you please re-instate my name in the README (it literally lists me as a contributor, but doesn’t give me any access to do anything). I emailed you about this and raised a Github issue, both done a few weeks ago, and have had no response, but I note you have pushed out changes to the plugin and are active in this forum.

If you could action this as soon as possible, it would be appreciated.

He never responded, but replied to other forum posts made afterwards.

After a while, the Plugin Review team confirmed they’d contacted him and would be taking action in a month, if the appropriate changes were not made. Meantime I’d noticed that the Github repo has gone AWOL. I hoped he’s just made it private, so that the issues log is still preserved somewhere.

Nearly one month later, it’s still the same, but he pushed out further changes just under 2 weeks ago. Again. However, I noticed something else – the owner has changed. Now it’s assigned to a brand new user, with no other forum or development history, set up just in the last few weeks. Have they handed this off to someone else or created a new account?

Next day, the plugin team had taken action.

And, just when you didn’t think this could get stranger, I received a message from the plugin team…

After closing it for guideline violation, they asked us to close the plugin, so now it’s closed per author request.

Even they didn’t believe it.

So, now it’s gone entirely. My aim of having it adopted, rather than closed, to prevent users from ending up with an abandoned plugin, has come to nothing. And, with it, I assume the repo issues log too.

It just leaves me with a question that, I suspect, will never be answered – why?

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As a post-script to all of this, I’m speaking to the plugin team about potentially taking it back. They seem receptive, but there’s no playback for this, so it’s still being discussed internally. It would be assigned back to me, with the understanding that I wind the code back to where it was when I handed it over (so the code is my own).

Of course, I had deleted my local copy of the code, lost the Github repo and the SVN repo is now empty but, thankfully, have been able to piece the code back together from SVN change logs.

If nothing else, my plan is to create a Github repo with the code.

Update, 22nd March

Not long after I published this post, the plugin team got in touch and offered me access to the plugin again. They removed all versions of the code from SVN that weren’t developed by me and allowed me to add a new one. I created version 3, which was a copy of the last one I pushed out before handing it to the previous developer. This would undo any changes they made, so I added a pinned forum post, as well as links in the change log to go read this before updating.

Most people have been grateful for what I’ve done here but not everyone. Some have not noticed what the update did and it’s removed functionality that they were using. There’s not really much I can do – it was do this or leave the plugin abandoned and, potentially, insecure.

I’m hoping a user of the previous version can come forward with a copy that they can share.