Today I received 2 emails from a site I never heard from before, entitled Joomlaaa.com. Seems like a spoof eh ?

The email was something like this:

Dear Joomla Developer :
We have listed your extension titled <my extension>
in our Joomla extension directory
and you can see it <link to extension>

and you can see your extension google rank <link to google search with my extension>

also we have made a new user account for you so you can edit your extension
you can login here
Your username <username>
Your password: <2 unique passwords in each mail>

• With our extension directoryAll joomla extensions can be listed (joomla 1.5 or joomla 1.0)( free or commericical)
• Auto approve for all extensions
• You can add any noumber of extensions you want
• You can edit your extension any time
• You can add images for your extension
• You can also add your extension itself so people can download it from our web site (in case you do not have a web site or want to save your bandwidth)

You can login now and check your extensions
wish you a happy 2009

This would be just another mirror site if it wasn’t for a few minor advancements.

1. Joomla.org (JED) has announced that it will stop accepting Joomla! 1.0 extensions and that it will no longer accept non-GPL licensed extensions and will remove them all this year. This site will (hopefully) omit this and list extensions no matter what.
2. Uploading extensions to their web. To get accepted to JED you need to have your own website and host the file yourself. And take note that some developers move on and leave their extensions somewhere to rot and eventually they 404 into extinction. (But maybe JED is planning to add that feature in the process or remaking their directory…

But all cant be good, eh ?

1. No ratings, no reviews..
2. Auto approving ? The site owner seems to have no interest in managing the site ? Altrough this auto-approving may be limited to the developers they “adopted” from joomla.org but it still..
3. Just the way they recruited developers, a single email saying “you’re in!” and giving you instant access to do whatever you want. OK, they had to do it some way, but could they have atleast asked ?
4. Unoriginal name, who will remmember it. But more importantly, who will take it seriously ?

Some developers do face tough times, unless their extensions are fully GPL’ed they will be exiled from joomla.org who seems to have gone the Debian way. And others face additional ( wanted or not ) publicity.

… or is this site small enough for noone to notice ?

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• Joomla! JED on GPL in 2009