I’m happy to say that at this point, all plugins that were approved and never used (that is, never had any code uploaded, ever) have been closed. Roughly 8500 plugins were closed for never having any code committed to them since approval.
In addition, the plugins that have been broken since we migrated to the new plugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party backed (April last year) due to incorrect SVN Short for "SubVersioN", it's the code management system used to maintain the plugins hosted on WordPress.org. It's similar to git. usage have also been closed. They weren’t showing up anyway, so it’s not like anyone could have installed them in the first place.
This means we currently have 700 plugins that have been approved and never used, dating back to April 2017.
Going forward, we’ll be holding any new submissions from developers who have an unused plugin. This means if you submit a plugin and get it approved and immediately turn around and submit a new one, we won’t even review it until you actually use the approved one.
This is not a change to guidelines. We already require you to provide a stable version of your code from our SVN service, so this is simply a means to enforce that guideline. If you have hosting, you’re expected to use it.
