As someone who has both taken over from another author [Visitor Stats/GUS], and had a plugin taken over by someone else [GL_Gallery2/G2 Bridge], I thought I'd chime in here.
In both those cases, I discussed with the other developer the ifs/whens/hows/ to make a smooth transition. In both cases, the names were changed to avoid confusion. In the case of the stats I worked damn hard to make sure the old data could be migrated to provide continuity between the two plugins. In both cases, all parties involved were mature about it and worked together.
When I read the first post I thought it was quite arrogant of
LWC to proceed the way he did. After reading the whole thread through, I still think so. It's not the fact that he made changes and wants to release them - it's that he is releasing them with the same names [and presumably the same db table names which will cause a headache for sure]. To me this isn't about what's allowed/not allowed by the license. It's not about open source vs. closed source mentalities. It's about common decency and respect for others and their work.
LWC has failed on both counts.
Now as for what
Casper wrote, I think
Tokyoahead and
Blaine covered that quite well. I just want to vent a little and comment on this:
When a plugin has had no development for over a year, often it seems that plugins for GL are not a priority!
Frankly,
they're not. All of the developers of the core and the plugins work for free. This means
they are the ones who set the priority - not the users. Family comes before GL development. Paid work comes before GL development. Sitting around relaxing with a whisky [or whiskey depending where you're from] comes before GL development.
The developers have to get something out of it - personal satisfaction, recognition, beefing up the CV - otherwise they would not spend their free time working on free software.
You have to understand that the vast majority of feedback we get [I'm basing this on almost all open source/free source projects I've worked on] fall into these categories:
- "this is broken, fix it for me now for free"
- "I would lower myself to use your work for free if you did X to it"
- "this is a stupid piece of shit - why would you work on that?"
- "I've created the mother of all patches to fix the kitchen sink - include it now"
- some form of entitlement ["I'm the user I'm entitled to X"]
Not all developers can put up with this day in and day out and still remain interested in what they're doing.
Kudos to the core developers.So please don't bash us because we aren't living up to your expectations - be happy that there is a group of dedicated developers providing cool stuff for free. [By
dedicated I mean of course the other developers - I did lose interest

and only update things occasionally.]
But now I'm ranting [maybe even raving?]...