How about creating a modular Addon that instead of running lua code straight it would have all its code saved in variables which would be saved in the WTF folder executed by a small peice of lua code. each string would stand for one function in the addon and would be restricted to 255 characters.
now you might ask whats the point of this?
simple if you have everything in variables and saved in your WTF then there is nothing stopping me from being able to allow the addon to communicate with others using the same addon and check if they have a new version and if they do they could pack up their variables into strings and send them over to me and i would reevaluate them as variables
this would allow easy distribution of new versions to say guild mates of an addon
am gonna make a proof of concept of this just to make sure it actually can be done
tell me what you think
~Yssaril