Michael Gracie

A shining example of how not to release a plugin for an open source platform?

In this case, the culprit is HP and the target is Wordpress. After reading about HP’s new weblog printing plugin over at Mashable, I thought it would be great to have easy printing capabilities on this site. So I search around the HP’s Tabblo site for a bit and finally find a link to download the Wordpress plugin.

Next stop…this. I’ve got to give them my email address and site location and agree to a bunch of terms and conditions in order to download a plugin for an free, open source software package that I originally received no-questions-asked?

I don’t even know if it will work. Is it compatible with my theme? How much hacking will be required? Does it jive with the other plugins?

Tell you what - I’ll save some folks the temptation of using the overpriced ink cartridges instead.

UPDATE: I took the leap of faith since someone from HP (?) was kind enough to respond. More in the comment thread…