When it comes to distribution platforms for software one of the frequent complaints of developers is uneven enforcement of rules and regulations, which makes it hard to know what is and isn’t acceptable. Recently we came across an example of this with Plugin Directory for WordPress:
While dealing with one of the vulnerabilities we recently discovered through our Plugin Vulnerabilities service, we were have a bit of issue discussing communicating about the issue since it turned out the plugin had two names.
On the Installed Plugins pages in WordPress it is referred to as Spider Event Calendar:
On the Plugin Directory its name is WordPress Event Calendar:
Okay, actually while the main name is WordPress Event Calendar, you can see that it is referred to by both names in different places:
It is confusing to say the least and it seems like restricting a plugin to one name would be reasonable thing to do, but what seem to be the bigger issue here was with the fact that using the word WordPress in a plugin’s name is supposed to be against the rules of the Plugin Directory.
On the Detailed Plugin Guidelines page it says:
Don’t violate our trademarks. Don’t use “wordpress” in your domain name. Use “wp” instead, or better yet, come up with your own original branding! People remember names.
On the Developer FAQ page it is put a lot more clearly:
Are there names you don’t permit?
We don’t allow ‘WordPress’ in plugin names as it’s redundant and somewhat obvious that you’re a WordPress plugin.
A little more looking showed that the same developer had six plugins with WordPress in the name:
All six of those plugins have associated paid plugins.
A search of the Plugin Directory shows that these are far from the only ones using WordPress in the name of plugins:
It certainly seems like the Plugin Directory is allowing the word WordPress to be used since it is in such wide use and it would be easy to detect its usage in the name of the plugins when getting the name of the plugins from their files to show it in the Plugin Directory. If this is the case then the documentation should be updated, otherwise we have just provided the people running the Plugin Directory with an easy way to find a lot plugins that they need to do something about.