375686 - Sandbox documentation doesn't address addons not intended to be public

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Policy, enhancement)

Description

[Johnathan Nightingale [:johnath]]

For understandable reasons, the policy documents around the sandbox are focused on answering questions about how to get out of the sandbox and into the public site.   For extension authors who don't want publicity for their extensions though, who want to use AMO as a sort of sourceforge-style hosting service for their custom, limited-audience extensions, the policy documents don't make it clear whether this is welcome (the first paragraph mentions that some items will stay in the sandbox idefinitely, but it's not clear (to me) if this is meant to be an accepted usage, or just reiterating that going public is not guaranteed.)

I think it is - I think that a key goal of the sandbox is to facilitate experimentation with add-ons, even if it's a niche application.  And judging from the diagram here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/pages/sandbox

It seems that this usage is fine - that as long as I don't nominate the add-on, it will quietly continue in the sandbox.  If this is an accurate interpretation, then I would propose text be added to the policy faq along the lines of:


  My add-on isn't ready for public consumption, or is only for expert users.  Can I keep it in the sandbox permanently?

  Absolutely.  The sandbox is intended to make it easy to experiment with add-ons that aren't ready for the rest of the world yet.  If your add-on is not explicitly nominated for public exposure, it will remain in the sandbox indefinitely.

Comment 1

[Mike Shaver (:shaver -- probably not reading bugmail closely)]

I think that's not quite right, though you correctly point out that we need a place for niche or experimental add-ons that isn't lumped in with the "random person uploaded a file to AMO, please don't install it unless you're being really careful" case.

Comment 2

[Nick Nguyen [:osunick]]

We're looking hard at the future of experimental add-ons.  The main thinking now being that we should set a time limit on add-ons that are in the 'experimental' bucket and encourage permanently experimental add-ons to be "listing-only" which are hosting off-site.  The goal here is to make sure all add-ons on AMO are on some sort of timeline towards a code review.

Comment 3

[Johnathan Nightingale [:johnath]]

Yep, suits me fine. I want experimentation to be cheap, but I don't want AMO to end up like sourceforge, with thousands of abandoned, semi-functional projects either. Thanks, Nick.