I remember at the time the Compiz developers were trying to get everyone else to either base their compositor on Compiz, or build in support for Compiz plugins.

I remember at the time the Compiz developers were trying to get everyone else to either base their compositor on Compiz, or build in support for Compiz plugins. That might have been feasible if there was a working design, but Compiz plugins were very hacky and the code was a mess. IIRC the only desktop that actually did it was Unity, and that was discontinued. So you can see some of the troubles with that approach.