Plugin Directory: Auto remove zips for plugins closed more than 60 days with no activity

[Ipstenu]

When a plugin is closed, developers are allowed to still push code to it, in the hopes that all corrections will be made.

However, a large percentage of plugins are never updated, resulting in a situation where people can (in fact) download zips of a plugin if they know how, even though no one should be using the plugin.

It would be nice if zips were auto-removed and no longer built if the following criteria is met:

1. The plugin is closed for at least 60 days

2. There have been no code-changes for at least 60 days

OR

3. There is no one with commit access to the plugin

On top of that, we should probably have a way to nuke all the files in the case of a GPL issue (i.e. if the plugin used non GPL code, we need to ensure it cannot be downloaded and really should nuke the files, but that's a bigger headache). I think, by preventing downloads of the zip, we protect ourselves a bit more.

It will also prevent angry people who were banned from kvetching that we 'kept their code' (even though it's open source...).

[dd32]

Instead of removing the files, we probably just want to limit access to them instead.

We could introduce a new post_meta along the lines of unavailable which if true/unset/etc would deny access to the ZIP.

That would mean that if the plugin is re-enabled, the previous ZIPs would become available again without needing to be rebuilt (which is important, if we care about file signatures or something).

[Ipstenu]

@dd32 That would work.

I was thinking, since they'd have to push a new version ANYWAY to come back no matter what, it's not really a harm and we can recoup disk space.

[dd32]

Replying to Ipstenu:

I was thinking, since they'd have to push a new version ANYWAY to come back no matter what, it's not really a harm and we can recoup disk space.

The ZIPs are stored in a SVN now, so deleting them doesn't actually recoup any disk space.