@Tim H. -
As an after-thought…. I’ve probably authored a good dozen or so WordPress plugins that I would provide to the community if I actually thought my time would be worth it to others (they could actually find them). I’m not too interested in providing a free working product if I have to jump through hoops to give it away.
@Terence -
I have to admit that’s an aspect I totally overlooked — the number of authors who have valuable, if not unique, contributions to make, who are totally put off by the intransigence at WP which for years hasn’t been able to see this particular nose in front of their face.
There is a plugin that might be of interest:
Self Hosted Plugings This plugin helps you to self-host your WordPress plugins on your own site. It even uses an extend/plugins/ structure When I first went to host my plugins on my own site, I was surprised that there wasn't anything out there to help me with the tricky job of deploying updates. WordPress has updating built into it, but it's not easy to apply that to plugins hosted on your own site. Until now...