01522: download groups Cookbook & Skins
Description: The download does not include Cookbook & Skins. I want to be able to include these.
I know of no way to do this. This needs to be added to the download distributions page.
I would also like a distribution which includes Profiles. Perhaps even the entire PmWiki website.
Thank you for your suggestion and for your interest in improving the accessibility of addons and skins in our project. While we understand the appeal of having all extensions and skins included in the core for easier download, there are several important reasons why this isn't feasible:
- Licensing and Copyright Constraints: Many addons and skins are created and maintained by independent developers under varying licenses. Including them all in the core would risk violating those licenses and the intellectual property rights of their creators.
- Maintenance Burden: Incorporating all addons and skins into the core would significantly increase the maintenance workload. Each addon and skin would need to be reviewed for compatibility, security, and quality; updated for new PHP versions; and maintained indefinitely. This is a huge undertaking—especially with over 1000 addons and 100+ skins.
- Sustainability of the Core Team: The core maintainer has dedicated over 16 years to this project, largely as a volunteer. Expanding the scope of the core without adequate funding or help risks burnout and could jeopardize the long-term health of the project.
Instead, we encourage users and developers to contribute by:
- Helping maintain a curated list of addons and skins with clear installation instructions.
- Offering funding or development time to support integration or maintenance of specific features.
- Improving documentation to help users install what they need more easily.
We remain committed to making the project accessible and user-friendly, but we must also be realistic about what is sustainable and respectful to everyone involved.
Thank you again for your understanding and support. --Petko
P.S. If you're looking to download the full contents of a site, you can search online using a phrase like "Ubuntu download entire website" for helpful tools and instructions. Please be sure to configure any tool you use to limit requests to no more than 30 per 60 seconds, to avoid overloading the server or triggering automatic blocking. Thanks for your consideration.
> Licensing and Copyright Constraints
PmWiki recipes are freely individually downloadable and installable.
What is the difference between having to download each individually vs downloading all?
Can you please provide an example of even one "risk violating those licenses and the intellectual property rights of their creators" ? --gnuzoo
Thanks for the question. When an addon is uploaded and made available for individual download, users are accessing it in the original context provided by the author. However, creating a ZIP archive of many addons--especially from different developers--constitutes a new act of redistribution. Redistribution requires that each addon have a license that explicitly permits it.
For example, Cookbook:AesCrypt has no license information. Under copyright law, that means "all rights reserved" by default. Even if it's publicly viewable, we can't legally modify or redistribute it without permission. Packaging it in an archive would be a copyright violation.
Some addons also use licenses incompatible with GPLv2, meaning we can't legally distribute them together with GPLv2 code. Our current policy--providing diffs or links--is the safest option unless we have explicit license terms.
We want to avoid legal risk and respect the rights of original authors, especially for unmaintained or ambiguously licensed addons. --Petko