There are multiple reasons. Some developers distribute their extensions from their own sites. That gives them total control of every part of the process. Some got started with sites such as sketchUcation and stick with them out of loyalty. And some no doubt resent the inspection and approval process needed to get an extension published in the EW. Other sites rely more on community review and comment without any big brother is in control vibe.
I see and many thanks for the explanation.
So I can understand that to publish your extension in EW I need to get approval from Trimble and the approval process is kind of difficult!
When developers submit to Extension Warehouse their code is reviewed to make sure it will not cause problems with other extensions. Some developers prefer not to submit for this review.
The other thing is the “tradition”. I think (as far as I remember) Sketchucation started earlier its own Plugin Store. Some of the devs there, keep the tradition and loyalty to that site. Even they can get the similar signature an approval process from EW “sing and encrypt” services.
Other developers, just do not wan to register to EW, or will not continue the development, or … whatever (personal, technical… ) reason just do not want to use EW.
For example myself will not register to EW. Because they mark and filter some extensions as “free”. Obviously some of its it not “free”, just free trial or just can be downloaded freely but you have to pay to get the licence to use. I know, most of them mentioning this in the description, but still in the start page and with the filter function you will get fals (misleading) advertisement.
Totally agree with you about this point. In the beginning when I started using EW I was mislead so many times when I found out that the extension is not free! It was a waste of my time! At first I thought I was mislead by the developers but later on I realized it was a EW thing which disappointed me even more. Trimble need to fix this problem because it is indeed misleading as not everyone read the description.
If someone is to lazy to read the description, they have no legitimate reason to complain about this. However, some extensions don’t explain it in their description if I recall correctly…
I wouldn’t call the process particularly difficult. We review for things that can risks causing clashes with other extensions, e.g. global variables or files outside your extension’s folder, for Ruby errors that make the extension unusable, and for extensions breaking the undo stack (as this can lead to data loss). In my view, every extension published anywhere should really fulfil these basic requirements. Opting for another website for the reason that your extension is broken isn’t anything I’d recommend. We also make recommendations on design, but those are optional to follow.
That said, there are other reasons to publish elsewhere, and there are issues with Extension Warehouse.
The sign up process can unfortunately take quite a long time. We are also aware of the technical issues like in-app purchases being listed as free, but sadly Extension Warehouse hasn’t gotten the resources to be updated as we’d wished.
You may also want full control of your intellectual property and the full user experience.
SketchUcation is also older, and many old-time developers who have their full portfolio over there has stuck to it.
Also the first think you open EW you see a list of Featured Extensions and Top Extensions and all clearly marked as free and I am sure that is not always true.
I got your points and fully agree with it. You also have no control about the developers decisions outside of EW and that I also understand. However I don’t get why you are not able to fix simple problems in the EW? I can not understand how you don’t have the resources? I mean SU has not changed much since 2017 so where resources are utilized? Trimple is big company and should have been able to do many things since 2017!
We all know that the development rate of SU is extremely slow and I don’t believe it’s because of the lack or resources! I mean I tried SU 2017 and compared it to 2021 and I almost can not tell what changed in the last 4 years! Not even a refresh to the icons which is extremely simple task!
If you mean me personally, I’m sorry but I can’t fix the EW. The Extension warehouse team (web developers) and the Extensibility team (API design, extension reviews, extension guidelines etc) are two different teams. I share the frustration, and I don’t try to make excuses, just describe the situation, but this is not something I or anyone on my team can fix.