Currently you have two kinds of plugins in your repo, some that are updated by you at very large intervals, other in short. When i have to decide which plugin i use for a customer i cannot choose a plugin with a large update interval. Especially if the plugin is new in your repo It seems that it is a kind of luck how large or short the update intervals will be in future. For plugins longer in your repo i can estimate it by the update history.
I don’t know the reason and philosophy behind why there are plugins in the repo which got its last update two years before. Maybe to give users the possibility to play around with it and check some things. Maybe they will be dropped and not updated anymore. But for productive use and implementation on a customer’s website this would surely be not a good choice to choose such a plugin. I could waste a lot of time and money if i would trust on a short update interval that doesn’t come.
Though other gpl clubs have fewer plugins in their repo, it is much more safe to choose a specific plugin for productive use from them. because they are nearly all updated regularly.
So i recommend to add an info to each plugin about how often it is planned to update.
The “status” only to each plugin is not helpful because it does not say anything about the future update interval you plan for the plugin and therefore it does not help me when i have to decide whether i can use a plugin on a production site or not, if i want to ensure that author updates for the plugin are coming more or less regularly and shortly after release also from you in future.
You have a lot of outdated plugins in your repo for which a lot of update requests from users exist. I think all of these people would like to know how often a plugin will be updated in future by you to the most recent version before choosing it for production use. Who wants to install a plugin for a customer for which new author plugin updates are either not anymore at all or for a long time period not available through your service?! At least it would be helpful to know whether a plugin will be updated in short distances to the author update or in longer.
As one example i want to mention the plugin “Advanced Dynamic Pricing For Woocommerce (Pro)” Advanced Dynamic Pricing For Woocommerce (Pro).
I would like to use it for my customer but can’t because it is outdated for a long time now (since January 31st, 2023) and it seems to me that it may not be updated anymore by you.
Your suggestion sounds good as long as it really reflects the planned updates and not only the past. Maybe it would also be helpful to know when it is planned to not update a plugin anymore or when it is not sure whether future updates will come.
