WordPress.org Plugin Developers Demand Transparency Regarding the Removal of Active Install Growth Data
Frustrations are mounting, as WordPress.org plugin developers plead with WordPress leadership to restore access to the active install growth data for plugins after it was removed last weekend without any public discussion. A ticket calling for bringing back the charts is home to a heated discussion on the matter but so far the developer community has not been able to get any clear answers on why access to the data was cut off. In his first response on the ticket, Matt Mullenweg asked developers to explain their reasoning for bringing the stats back, without communicating why they were removed in the first place, asking them to present “that side of the argument.” No decision makers have confirmed this to be a security issue. Mullenweg’s second response on the ticket evades the questions plugin developers are asking and instead states that the availability of an API for this data was never promised: As has been pointed out, there was never an API made for public use or with any promise of availability, people just reverse engineered and exfiltrated the data to create the chart. I definitely think we can show some more stats to plugin authors about their own plugins, and…
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