I added the publisher MFE by adding an entry to config file. My expectation was that by adding an MFE_APP and the discovery-plugin, I should be able to have simple MFE that relies on the discovery service working. Assuming the MFE doesn’t require any complex configuration.
Obviously, expectations can be set. As it is, any MFE that relies on the discovery service will need to be implemented outside of tutor-mfe because they will need to override CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST.
That could be addressed by adding logic around CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST in course-discovery to make the service available for MFE_APPs. In production it’s as simple as CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST = ("{{ MFE_HOST }}").
So that as a developer I don’t have to implement an MFE and a tutor-plugin unless I really need it.
In this scenario, the tutor user should know that they need the discovery service.
You’re right for organization-api-url! I think we could add studio-url, I don’t see any downside if it makes the discovery more “ready” to use out of the box.
I don’t think we can use the full feature set of publisher without a Salesforce account. So on that basis I would say no, it should not be included by default. I think some of the features also rely on ecommerce… so yeah 
If I can get it working and it works well for my use case (create new course runs for new customers), I’m happy to maintain a plugin.