BuddyPress.org

Well the deal with the is_there_a_bp() fn is that if it is in the activated list it just arbitrarily loads bp. That only happens once so it should be ok when bp actually gets to load in it’s natural seqence.

If than fn finds bp installed it loads it. Don’t know how your plugin isn’t getting loaded.

There is an issue with just doing require_once() for bp. The user may have bp deactivated. In that case your plugin shouldn’t just decide to run it. It should respect the wishes of the user.

There is a long discussion about all this base plugin/dependent plugin stuff going on in the wp-hackers mailing list at the moment.