Hi. I worked on a new feature for an IntelliJ GLSL plugin. But it seems that the original founder does not react to PRs or anything since May 28, 2025. So I was wondering, would it be ok (morally and legally) to republish the plugin and make my fork the new main fork? Of course while keeping their donation link in the description and readme.
Does anybody know a email adress or something to contact the Jetbrains support team which could answer me this question?
If the plugin is dead - especially not supported in latest versions/broken then that’s fine.
Though… just so your fork doesn’t end up as another dead plugin - make sure that you are up for keeping this plugin alive not for just a few months of motivation and passion - but for years potentially as people report bugs, request features, IDE versions change…
Burning out when maintaining a plugin is real, and the real work isn’t spurts of drive to improve it and leave, but readiness to fix bugs even when you wouldn’t otherwise want to do anything on the plugin.
License wise (from skimming the repo) the plugin is Apache 2.0 - a very permissive license of OSS software.
You’d need to be careful about branding though - you may not try to impersonate the original plugin, use the same name, same word for word descriptions and identical code on the JetBrains plugin marketplace.
It’s unclear from your message - but if by “making it the new main fork” you mean being able to publish your version in a way where it appears as the original plugin did in JetBrains marketplace that isn’t possible. JB team will refuse to take someone else’s plugin and rights to it and give it to you security, moral, legal and ownership rights all play a role in that.
Though - if you are up for maintaining the plugin, and make a fork that either replaces a provably deprecated plugin or rewrite it enough to not essentially be identical code with minor adjustments - but enough to genuinely make it a standalone plugin in its own right - then it is morally and presumably legally alright.
Contacting the JB team through email to discuss the specifics of what you want to do and asking them what they think is the best course of action - if you want to go through with publishing ask them first, you’ll avoid breaking any rules and you’ll also avoid any misunderstandings with regards to the original author’s work.
The appropriate email is: marketplace@jetbrains.com
Hi!
In general, if the original plugin is open source and its license permits redistribution and modification, publishing a fork can certainly be an option. We’d encourage making a reasonable effort to contact the original maintainer first, and it sounds like you’ve already been trying to do that.
We do not transfer an existing plugin to a new vendor unless it is requested by the original author. Without that request, we cannot take over or reassign an existing listing, even if the plugin appears to be abandoned.
If you decide to publish your fork on JetBrains Marketplace, we’d recommend using a distinct plugin ID and name, clearly stating that it is a community-maintained fork, and following all requirements of the original project’s license, including providing appropriate attribution.
We also want to mention that we can’t provide legal advice or guarantee that a particular case is permitted, since each situation can be different and may involve licensing, ownership, and other considerations. You are welcome to submit your plugin, and each submission will be reviewed individually.
Even if we do not identify any concerns during the initial review, we may need to take action later if we receive a valid complaint from the original author or rights holder.
However, we have seen similar cases where authors forked abandoned plugins and helped bring them back to life. It can be a great way to keep useful plugins available for the community, as long as the relevant licensing and Marketplace requirements are met.
Thanks for the reponse. I already tried to contact the original author since one month via Linkedin and even tried to connect with him throug Instagram. But on all this platforms it seems they stopped posting on May 2025.
In the similar cases you mentioned, was it mendatory to change most of the original code of the original plugin (like @Lukas Kremla mentioned)?
Just to add my 2 cents to my 2 cents - your case sounds like “abandoned/provably un-maintaned plugin”, so I guess the rules might be more lenient. But I’m curious for the actual answer from JetBrains myself..
Chiming in as a 3rd party developer with a private opinion: I do have plugins that seem to be quite unmaintained, and there are open issues. I simply do not have a bandwidth to update them.
But broadly
plugin.xml