Too many updates could kill WordPress !

  • Resolved ecollart

    (@ecollart)


    4 years, 11 months ago

    Hello,

    I don’t want to enter the debate between fixing bugs, security flaw, evolving and better testing code here but I am convinced too many WordPress updates will kill WordPress or it will have to become a regular commercial product !

    It is impossible for all free contributors to the eco-system to follow the actual rate of changes and by far too many amateur’s sites that are part of the Internet Richness are just dissapearing just because of that !

    At now short-term, all plugin developpers required to work that hard will stop doing that for free and only big companies able to pay developpers will survive !
    Middle-term, this means free products will dissapear although that’s what built the success of WordPress !

    That’s not something limited to WordPress but WordPress is a flagship of building Internet for all and not only for those having and making money with sites !!!!

    Time to stabilize and think for instance to produce Long Term Support releases or somethin similar so enormous time investments done by all (not only free developpers) can be a bit “rewarded” alowwing to plan how long minimum the work will be useful without requiring so many updates !

    Another idea to help allowing better stability is to use a kind of internal “firewall” that could be instructed to block access to known security flaws. This should decrease imapact on plugins… I know some plugins are doing that but they are complicated for amateurs and usually not free …

    A plugin stopping to work often means a site that doesn’t work anymore as the plugin was installed because of a real need ! We all know that we should not install too many plugins.

    So, yes, I am a bit upset by direction taken by WordPress and want to post my feelings here hoping I won’t have to apply any other drastic solution to my little sites if the WordPress Spirit should dissapear…

    Long life to WordPress but wit a better consideration for the “small” ants supporting it !

    [ Signature moderated ]

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

  • There is a big discussion going on about changing the release cadence. A lot of the developers want smaller releases more often.
    You might want to get involved in the discussions, so that there are more voices than just the core developers.
    Should Security Fixes Continue to Be Backported to very old versions?
    Proposal: Auto-Update Old Versions to 4.7
    Follow-up Discussion on Major Auto Updates
    Major and Minor Version Release Cadence
    Call for volunteers: Release Model Working Group

    Several of these have links to more discussion.

    Thread Starter ecollart

    (@ecollart)

    I tried to read all those and I saw nowhere consideration for plugins development time being enough to follow release rate (far too high on my opinion) even for not paid developpers !
    I am afraid that such a high rate will just discourage volunteers to develop for WordPress and WordPress is about nothing without the plugins ecosystem !
    If you must pay for majority of plugin, what will be the case with such high release and change rate, WordPress will lose its soul quite soon ! It is already hard today to find plugin alternative to keep you website as you designed it for those plugins obsoleted because not updated since 1 year (plugin like WordFence complains about those making you scared of potential problem) !
    When you write about developpers, I understand it’s only about WordPress core developpers !

    I don’t feel confortable enough to be actively part of discussion around that, I made my opinion visible here hoping it can be useful.

    Future will tell me if I can continue with WordPress or not…

    Long life to WordPress !

    Eric Collart.

    Unfortunately, no one making the decisions will see your post here. That’s why I suggested that you make a comment over on one of those posts. It is good to have voices from the community instead of just the core developers. They don’t see it how you do, so your view is valuable. It’s the community silence that lets them continue with how they think things should be.

    Thread Starter ecollart

    (@ecollart)

    Ah, I see the point now…

    Problem is that I didn’t find a way to write a comment there…
    Can you explain me how to do that ?

    I saw something around opening a ticket to submit a bug but that’s not what we are discussing about ….

    Huge thanks for your help and patience…

    Eric Collart

    When you are logged in with your www.remarpro.com account, like you are here in the forums, you should be able to comment on those pages if comments are still open (some of them are old, so comments close).
    I just looked at the one for Release Cadence and comments are closed. So, I guess go to the most recent post about the topic and comment there. You can refer to the other posts with their URL if you want.

    I can mention in Slack to change the date range for comments, and maybe that could happen.

    Thread Starter ecollart

    (@ecollart)

    Sooo complicated where it should not …

    Sorry but I give up !

    Huge thanks for your efforts and good luck with what’s next !

    Eric Collart

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    So there’s good news.

    The people working on this absolutely worry about the impact of too many releases on the average user and developer.

    And? The majority of MINOR releases (like 5.4.1) have little to no impact on plugins. They fix minor issues, and I can only think of a couple times in the last 6 years where a minor release out and out broke plugins (and that sadly was because we had no other choice — it was let people be hacked or break things).

    We make a concerted effort to communicate directly to developers of plugins when potentially breaking changes go out, and speaking as the plugin rep, the far far far majority of plugins have no issues even with major (5.3 -> 5.4) upgrades at all.

    A plugin not being updated in a year, though, speaks more to the activity of the developer, and how much you can reasonably rely on them if there’s an issue. Should you be scared? No. But you should be aware that resting your tentpole on something that isn’t maintained comes with risks.

    re:

    Unfortunately, no one making the decisions will see your post here.

    Considering that this forum is called “Requests and Feedback”, it seems odd that people making decisions won’t see posts here. This is quite disheartening news. Perhaps it would be advisable to direct the decision makers toward this forum, or at least to make sure they are aware of its existence. Otherwise, change the name to “Requests and Feedback to be Filed Under G”.

    I am with ecollart here. Fewer updates unless they are for security reasons, please.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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