Looking at the development of WordPress would be a great reference tool for establishing similar development of Sketchup plugins. Google seems hesitant, or perhaps outright against the notion of hosting and managing a SU ruby script store. Frankly, we don't need Google for that. Sure, Ruby is capable of doing a lot of nasty things to a computer; WordPress uses JavaScript and PHP and MySQL and trust me, entire web servers can be brought down with the right code inserted into a WordPress-powered site. How is that different that the thousands of extensions available for Mozilla's Firefox browser? or for their email app, Thunderbird? Maybe Apple can protect most iPhone and iPod Touch users, but not for those devices that have been cracked open with jail-breaking software.
My point with all of this is that an effective, safe, and dynamic scripting community can be built for Sketchup. Will there be risks? Yes, but as others have said, coders here have reputations and trust with members. That is the starting point for anyone. If a person is serious about developing for SU, then they know that they must build real trust with the community.
A plugin repository, managed for and by users, is the only way to go. People will look at the code, and they can ask questions. Experienced users can point out obvious issues, and even perhaps outright hostile code. WordPress had all of these issues -- and discussions -- early on, and it was decided that it was going to be up to the community to police itself. Really, isn't that the best way? Now WordPress probably has THOUSANDS of plugins, and they range from very professional, well-coded to the first time unoptimized code of beginners. The cream makes it way to the top, to the point where many of these plugin developers create business opportunities for themselves.
We, as a user base, can't dictate or control where Sketchup goes as an application. However, as a strong, united, viable and active community, we would carry a lot of influence into the future of the program. While WordPress, the core program, is open-source, it is still under tight control, almost, but not quite like Google has total control over Sketchup. However, the developers over there at WordPress.org work to create a better API all the time, offering the theme and plugin communities more and more tools to access and use. All of them benefit, and most especially, the average WordPress user benefits, without knowing a single line of code.
I don't dismiss people's concerns about potential issues that can be created by bad or illicit code, but from my own experience, those concerns can, and do, get addressed all the time. The bad guys try something new, and the community rushes in to fix the problem. It's always there, but by far, the vast majority of plugins do nothing but help people build better web sites and web experiences.
By the way, I'm not a WordPress dot Com employee or anything, and I'm not even a coder. I'm just a bit of an evangelist for a program that I have seen grow from a baby into a grown-up. It gets better all the time, and a LOT of people are enjoying the benefits.
Sketchucation is already a great community. I've only been here a short while and I see a lot of parallels to my WordPress experience. You all know that on the internet, one thing you have of value is your name, and therefore your reputation. Building a formal plugin community would leverage that, and, as I hopefully have shown with this far-too-long-post, is something that is not only possible, but desirable.
