Conceptual change: publisher => namespace

[spoenemann]

In the Visual Studio Marketplace, the publisher field from the package.json is used to define the namespace under which an extension is published (see Publishing Extensions). One or more users can be granted the right to use a specific publisher name when publishing an extension. The actual user who published it is hidden in the marketplace, only the publisher is shown instead.

After a discussion with @svenefftinge, we'd like to follow a different approach in Open VSX.

• Rename publisher to namespace (we still use the publisher field from package.json for compatibility with VS Code extensions).
• Initially, there is no restriction on namespaces. Every user can publish to every namespace.
• The user interface shall display the actual user who published an extension.
• It shall be possible for users to claim a namespace so nobody else can publish to it. Later we'll also offer means to manage namespaces by granting access rights to other users (Implement namespace management #5).
• We'll create a GitHub service account named open-vsx through which we'll publish extensions to open-vsx.org using scripts. These scripts will be maintained in an open source repository at github.com/open-vsx/publish-extensions
• Remove the --create-publisher flag from the CLI (Add a CLI flag to create a publisher #16) and introduce a command create-namespace instead.

This approach allows to keep the relationship of namespaces (i.e. publishers) to organizations or individual users, but in addition it gives us the flexibility of publishing a large number of extensions through scripts in a transparent way and still retain the original qualified names (publisher.extension). The open-vsx user is meant to create trust: instead of publishing third-party extensions in secrecy on someone's local machine, we'll do this openly and transparently.

[marcdumais-work]

Interesting and flexible approach - sounds good to me.

@spoenemann Would it be fine for me to attempt to publish our vscode-builtins extensions to the registry? I would just publish the version we already have on the GH release for now.

[spoenemann]

Yes, but please wait until the changes described in this issue are implemented. I will erase the database afterwards (hopefully for the last time). As soon as this issue is closed, it should be safe to start publishing stuff.

[spoenemann]

@marcdumais-work please go ahead :-)

[spoenemann]

I'll document the basic steps for publishing in the Wiki tomorrow.