The FAIR Package Manager  ## Metadata - Author: [[KrautPress Podcast]] - Full Title: The FAIR Package Manager - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/8ac89f24-b749-485e-bf36-a3b788896c91 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **WordPress Crisis Sparks Collaboration** - The WordPress world changed dramatically in October due to uncertainty around WordPress.org's availability. - Joost de Valk and Karim Marucchi, along with other community members, quickly collaborated to address ecosystem challenges. Transcript: Simon Kraft Would you like to tell me why we're here? You're pointing at each other. That's perfect. Okay. Yeah. So in October of last year, the WordPress world changed a bit and a lot of drama happened. And while we didn't necessarily like any of the drama, we did feel that there needed to be a solution to the problems that were being thrown at us. So Karim and I, from different angles, looked at this and thought, okay, we need to fix this. It turned out quite quickly that we were not alone. So we published our posts in December, very much wanting to avoid that. We'd been talking for a while. We wanted to avoid posting before Christmas. We wanted to have a nice and easy Christmas break, but it wasn't granted to us. Why did you post before Christmas then? Because Matt closed WordPress.org for the holidays. So WordPress.org was suddenly closed and he said in his post announcing the closure that he didn't know if he would have the funds to reopen it. Karim Marucchi We were instantly getting emails from clients asking if that meant that they wouldn't get updates. Simon Kraft Yeah. So we did our posts. We got a bit of response from the ecosystem already. People reaching out like, hey, we're all so worried. We have our thoughts. Then there was a post on WordPress.org about us doing a fork, which we weren't doing. And then we got a lot more reach out from people around the ecosystem. Karim Marucchi At the time, before we were speaking about the need for federation and the need for the idea around how do we create an ecosystem that everybody can work with. And as he said, when we first posted, we thought we were relatively alone, but then these other groups all started quietly reaching out. So there was only a few right up until Matt posted the JK Press post that sort of pushed it over the edge ([Time 0:00:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9ef706e1-e27d-454b-bfcc-2b62dfa0a28c)) - **FAIR's Ecosystem Enhancements** - FAIR is a federated replacement for WordPress.org, enabling decentralized plugin hosting. - It improves security, GDPR compliance, and allows commercial plugins to be found in the WordPress backend. Transcript: Simon Kraft And we had a lot of prolific people that were building cool stuff. And you've seen now the chairs, Ryan, Mika, and Kerry. And they led their team and we were building like, what is it that we need to want to replace the.org ecosystem without replacing WordPress itself? And that's what we built. So that's what FAIR is. It's a replacement for the.org ecosystem. A federated replacement is the idea so that people can run their own repository as if they're a host and not be reliant on mirroring WordPress.org, which is always going to be a problematic Approach. It also allows for plugins to be hosted outside of WordPress.org, which has lots of benefits because it means that we are now making all those plugins findable in the backend, which Means that you can have commercial plugins be found in the backend of WordPress for the first time. We fixed some other issues in the process, now compatible with the Cyber Resilience Act, so that we can actually do security in a proper way. And even more importantly, it's much more compatible with the GDPR, because it turned out that there were a lot of requests to WordPress.org that actually could be replaced with just Simple things on the client side. So there were a lot of requests that were sending data from every WordPress admin user to WordPress.org that didn't need to exist. ([Time 0:02:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bf092694-10f5-4a88-a980-a7a36d761954)) - **FAIR Governance via Linux Foundation** - Putting FAIR under the Linux Foundation ensures proper governance and fosters community trust. - This model is a significant step forward for WordPress ecosystem governance. Transcript: Simon Kraft What we did announce tonight is that we did all of this and then put it under the Linux Foundation as a project under the Linux Foundation, which means that we arranged for proper governance For all of this. We have a TSC, that is a technical steering committee that is chosen from the community that leads this project, and then we'll have everything around that that is normal within the Linux Foundation So member companies, et cetera. Basically a system like OpenJS or CNCF or any of the other open source foundations that you may know, which I think is a huge step for our ecosystem because we've never had that option Before. But is that the answer if we're talking about governance? Because I don't think that's like the holy grail of fixing all governance issues. ([Time 0:05:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/48d22aec-e13c-4bf3-b204-35ec2646ff2f)) - **FAIR's Flexible Architecture** - FAIR consists of a plugin altering update sources and a server-side component replacing WordPress.org. - It allows hosts to filter plugins by criteria like PHP version, enhancing control and security. Transcript: Simon Kraft So then you end up here. Circling back to the technical side of things, you said it's not a fork. No. What is it then? It's two things. It's a plugin on the one hand that changes where WordPress gets its updates and changes some of these other requests into other things. And it's a server-side component that runs a mirror. Or no, it's not. Well, it's not a mirror. It's a replacement for WordPress.org. It has all the plugins from WordPress.org, but it also has stuff from outside. Hybrid mirror thing. Yes. And it can also be its own thing. So it doesn't have to be a mirror. You can just shut that part down if you want to. So you could have one of the things that a large corporation might do is say, hey, we only allow these 40 plugins to be found in our ecosystem because these are the 40 plugins that we have Vetted for our sites. And then they could have an entire system where people could set up their own WordPress sites and could only pick from plugins that they've pre-vetted, which in the corporate world Could be very useful. And actually, the fact that you can filter these things and change a bit how these things work, it's also very useful for hosts. So as I was talking to larger hosts around the world, one of the requests that I got a few times was, hey, we'd like to restrict the plugins that people can install by which PHP version they Support, because we want to move away from 7.4 to 8.2. And we'd like to get away from plugins that only work on 7.4. This is very doable, but we have never up until now put these things into the hands of hosts as a tool. ([Time 0:07:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/59aa3293-44e7-41ad-931d-1e7ab34c802c)) - **Adopt FAIR Collaboratively** - Hosts and users are encouraged to adopt FAIR to strengthen and optimize the WordPress ecosystem. - Collaborative use prevents ecosystem fragmentation and benefits all stakeholders. Transcript: Simon Kraft Me as a private person to use all of that? Can I just install the plugin and do something with it? Yes, you could. Even if I'm not at a hoster that... No, so we also have a server running that has all this. I will say that I hope a lot of hosts will just offer this, because I do think that that is better for everyone in many ways, because it makes the ecosystem a lot stronger, and it also divides The cost of running all these servers by all the hosts. So it's one of the things that was mentioned a few times, like there's a high cost to running WordPress at all. There is some optimization that could have been done there that we've already been doing in this process, but this is a much more, much better optimization of that for everyone involved. Karim Marucchi And to be clear, this isn't in competition with. As we said on stage, we are inviting Automatic, WP Engine, the other hosts to do this together. ([Time 0:09:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c33ff6bc-6757-4521-b75c-cd7a25a9c902)) - **FAIR's True Intent and Risks** - The main risk is misunderstanding FAIR as an attack on WordPress, whereas it is intended to unify and sustain the community. - Without such initiatives, the future of WordPress as we know it could be at risk. Transcript: Simon Kraft Is there anything you're worried about? There are always a lot of things to worry about in this regard. I think that the biggest worry we have is that this will be misconstrued as an attack on WordPress, which it's not. It's our very, very hard try to do something that benefits us all and keeps the community together. Karim Marucchi The biggest problem we have is the possibility of a slowdown of where this community and ecosystem is going over the next two years. We're trying to bring folks back to the table. Simon Kraft I honestly think that if nothing happens, we'll have the question is, do we still have WordPress five or 10 years from now? And I think that that's the biggest risk to all of us. ([Time 0:11:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/35420637-bf7d-4339-83ef-e779368d2de4)) - **FAIR's Vision for WordPress** - Karim Marucchi highlights the unique opportunity to break away from sole commercial control and maintain WordPress as open source. - FAIR aims to make WordPress the "operating system of the open web" supported by a broad investment base. Transcript: Simon Kraft I think we came into this for different reasons, but also for the same reason is that we love the community. And honestly, I was looking around me and going like, okay, we need to fix this. Who can do this and who can speak about this openly? Karim Marucchi And for me, it's now been more than 30 years that I've been working with content management systems. And almost all of them have had a bell curve of success. This represents the opportunity of taking all the wonderful work that has been done and not losing it. From when Matt started the project to the ecosystem and the community that there is today, there hasn't been a single content management system that I can find that has had a successful Break from being maintained mostly only by one commercial entity and still maintained an open source direction successfully. So imagine a world where we can make the WordPress project, the operating system of the open web, because there is also an ecosystem of companies that are invested in maintaining that Infrastructure, not just a few. ([Time 0:12:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/76a30b7f-acce-4de6-8972-bc8216cb1a86))