Modifying WordPress plugins

In the spirit of open source software, I would definitely start by contacting the original developer. If your changes are an improvement to the codebase, and do not take the functionality of the plugin in a new direction, collaboration may be welcomed.

If your modifications are rejected by the original developer, there are some other things to consider before you move ahead:

  1. Is the plugin that you originally forked a free plugin, or paid? Or is it free but offering paid upgrades (freemium)? If it is revenue-generating in any way, forking it and re-releasing with minor changes is morally questionable.

  2. Do you have the time and bandwidth and desire to maintain a new, forked version of the original plugin? If not, you probably don’t want to release it publicly just to get your very minor changes into other people’s hands. You may be better off just maintaining your own fork of the plugin, for your own projects.

  3. Could the modifications in behavior be accomplished in a secondary plugin? There’s quite a few examples of plugins that require / modify / build upon other plugins. This route requires staying abreast of updates to both WP core and the initial plugin, which can be a headache, but if it is possible to make your changes via hooks, actions, and (safe & sane) overriding of functions from the original plugin, this might be a route to explore.

Sorry for not providing a definitive answer, but the situation could point to many possible outcomes.

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