Originally Posted by
LordEntrails
Abandoned extensions are common. And even more common than that are community devs who are not professional coders and don't know how to go about open sourcing something, don't know about semantic versioning, and quite simple are making some mod for their own use and go ahead and make it available to the community.
But, if you are going to put professional or commercial expectations on them and what they share, they are simple not going to share.
Now, there are also professional developers who are community devs too, like Dulux and others. They take the time to keep track of what's in beta and how it may impact their extensions. They might using the versioning tools available and they might not. They generally do an awesome job of updating their extensions in a timely manner when they do break. Something that is very generous of them to do with their free time.
I'm actually getting a little upset at the vehemence I am perceiving from some in this thread. Hopefully I am misconstruing what is being said, but I don't think I am. And I find it... well, I would ask that those upset about this issue take a step back and consider their own role and responsibilities.
Do I run a Windows update before I am going into a conference room to make some presentation to some executive? Nope. Do I update Java before I am about to demo software that depends on Java applets? Nope. Take responsibility for your own actions. Understand what you are using, behave accordingly.
Yes there are some good ideas in this thread, that I hope are given due consideration. And I have faith they will be. Their are things that can and should be done to limit the impact of unconsidered use of extensions and poor updating practices. But no matter what is done, nothing will ever prevent the creation of a better fool.