Linux Foundation's announcement here https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-annou...
EDIT - HN Discussion about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44205865
Very cool!
I have spent the last few months on and off thinking about creating something like this for some projects of mine. I've been looking into ATProto [0], IPFS [1], Radicle [2], and Iroh [3]. I was tending towards Iroh lately but I also like ATProto so going to check out this FAIR [4] protocol because I'm all for having widely adopted common protocols.
Thanks! I've added that link to the top text as well.
After looking at their repos, especially [1], I think it'd probably have been better if they made a soft-fork of Wordpress with its own infrastructure instead of the current setup where they try to hijack core wordpress with alternative implementations. This approach is doomed to fail, as the core Wordpress developers would be forced by executive directives to break said mechanisms.
Also, the jkpress post by Matt Mullenwegg linked in TFA has to be one of the most unprofessional and caustic things I've ever seen someone write, and reflects poorly on his character.
Seems smart to start by contributing a more openly governed path. If Matt starts to fight, sabotage and shut that down it gives the important yeah-we-did-try style cover to the reasonable next step of forking.
By being unreasonably reasonable in this way I would expect they bring the most members of the community with them if a fork has to happen.
They also leave a door open for Matt to leave this effort alone or even welcome it. A potential road to recovering trust over time.
> the jkpress post by Matt Mullenwegg linked in TFA has to be one of the most unprofessional and caustic things I've ever seen someone write, and reflects poorly on his character.
Evidently you haven't been paying much attention to Matt or WordPress. Matt Mullenweg is - and seemingly always has been - simply a caustic, manipulative, dishonest, petty, etc... person. He was generally good at hiding it, but it always peeked through on an annual basis. But it's simply been the norm for the past 9 months - sometimes on a daily basis.
Another gold nugget here (has archived links) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41839864
But the best reading is the initial lawsuit from wp engine. It's just overflowing with screenshots of self-incriminating toxicity.
Goodtime line of events here https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...
I don't think it's likely that core will actively break these things. If they removed the ability to filter HTTP requests, they'd break a lot of plugins and likely a lot of sites, which would become a nightmare, because their main selling point is "one click install, never worry about it again" -- they primarily compete with Wix, Jimdo etc, not with other CMS.
If they changed their backend to disallow this implementation from accessing it, they'd also break it for older versions of WP (which feels like the majority) and cut off the upgrade-path for those sites.
WP's heavy use of filters & actions are what makes it bearable to work with for developers, and without the plugin ecosystem, Wordpress would be no serious competitor to anything.
I don't know if this will work out, the code looks worrying - they support all the way down to php 7.2, but OOP and composer don't require php8. On the other hand, so do most WP plugins, and core does too.
The contributors who worked on this project (including myself - I'm one of the TSC co-chairs) are very familiar with the internals of WordPress - we were the ones who wrote them :)
Blocking the way that FAIR works would break the way that premium plugins work, which would break a huge amount of the ecosystem, so we think it's unlikely - WordPress core would need to be patched.
I suspect, without knowing anything, that WPEngine's lawsuit will put wordpress in a position where they can't do anything to suppress alternative implementations of their infrastructure.
I'm suspicious of the Linux Foundation, and am pretty much on the side of wordpress in the big dispute, but I'd switch to a distributed solution in a second if it worked 75% as well. The difference in management risk between a) dealing with a single CEO of a single organization who behaves that way in public, and b) a distributed Linux Foundation sponsored apt-style plugin repository, is huge.
If a lot of people are like me, that means wordpress is doomed. People don't want to fork because they don't want to pay for wordpress development. Taking away revenue from wordpress is going to stagnate it (even more, and it's a dinosaur anyway.) The parasites will have killed the host.
> People don't want to fork because they don't want to pay for wordpress development.
People don't fork because they wouldn't stay compatible with core, and thus not keep compatibility with most of the plugins if they do anything meaningful to improve the code (and if you don't, why would you fork?)
core and plugins are handcuffed together: plugins are nothing without core, but core is just a horrible mess of spaghetti code with no value without plugins. yet core can't really be improved without abandoning a bunch of plugins (on which they depend for being viable as a CMS).
So far, core seems to err on the side of plugin authors (unless they're deemed competitors to .com), i.e. rug-pulls and replacing the plugin with malware-adjacent "new functionality" is totally fine for .org's plugin masters.
Kill wordpress please, it's abomination
Sad to say, but for the meantime Wordpress is a dead end at least for my personal needs.
I wrote about it in my blog [1]. It is an amazing tool with an unstable company behind.
Time will show us if the FAIR Package Manager will be able to improve the overall ecosystem status.
Migrating to SSG is definitely one of the options!
I do wonder what other CMSes people do enjoy, though. My blog runs on Grav, a flat file CMS that still allows me to easily keep the content in Git, while also having some dynamic content and search (and optionally an admin UI): https://getgrav.org/
I feel like Grav was waaay ahead of its time. For the past year I've been chipping away at something inspired by it but written in Rust with KDL as the format for storing pages (and page data).
Hopefully I'll be able to release it by the end of the summer.
Grav was what convinced me that ultimately a CMS doesn't have to be married to a database, at least for what could be conventionally considered small websites.
about KDL https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28510031 kdl stands for 'cuddly' document language
This is the official website for FAIR: http://fair.pm/ . It currently redirects to https://github.com/fairpm . Here's a description:
> The FAIR Package Manager is a decentralized alternative to the central WordPress.org plugin and theme ecosystem, designed to return control to WordPress hosts and developers. It operates as a drop-in WordPress plugin, seamlessly replacing existing centralized services with a federated, open-source infrastructure.
> There are two core pillars of the FAIR system:
> - API Replacement: It replaces communication with WordPress.org APIs (such as update checks and event feeds) using local or FAIR-governed alternatives. Some featuresālike browser version checksāare handled entirely within the plugin using embedded logic (e.g., browserslist).
> - Decentralized Package Management: FAIR introduces a new package distribution model for themes and plugins. It supports opt-in packages that use the FAIR protocol and enables hosts to configure their own mirrors for plugin/theme data using AspirePress or their own domains. While stable plugins currently use mirrors of WordPress.org, future versions will fully support FAIR-native packages.
You can try the FAIR plugin at this link: https://github.com/fairpm/fair-plugin/releases
Are they going to be able to maintain the volunteer team who curate the catalogue? Currently a fair amount of work goes into making sure that hosted packages do not contain malware and also add value in that they don't replicate the features of existing packages. This workload has increased recently with AI generated submissions.
This is very exciting to see momentum going in this trajectory.
Kudos to all involved behind the scenes to even get to this point. Ideas are cheap, execution is hard, especially across so many disciplines, so major props for the coordination and collaboration.
Related:
WordPress.org bans WP Engine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41655967 - Sep 2024 (490 comments)
If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41676653 - Sep 2024 (245 comments)
WP Engine is not WordPress - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628 - Sep 2024 - (165 comments)
Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41726197 - Oct 2024 - (659 comments)
The ACF plugin on the WordPress directory has been taken over by WordPress.org - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821400 - Oct 2024 (224 comments)
So long WordPress - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41974637 - Oct 2024 (211 comments)
WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41826082 - Oct 2024 (211 comments)
Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41872628 - Oct 2024 - (143 comments)
Mullenweg threatens corporate takeover of WP Engine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41712617 - Oct 2024 - (120 comments)
Matt Mullenweg cries foul and threatens me with legal action - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41727888 - Oct 2024 - (43 comments)
Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42469708 - Dec 2024 - (122 comments)
WordPress Is in Trouble - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42687121 - Jan 2025 (439 comments)
Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors planning a fork - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42667766 - Jan 2025 (236 comments)
Mullenweg Shuts Down WordPress Sustainability Team, Igniting Backlash - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42672675 - Jan 2025 - (172 comments)
Matt Mullenweg, Automattic's CEO, Seems Bound and Determined to Wreck WordPress - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42773311 - Jan 2025 - (57 comments)
Doing the lord's work!
Here's another timeline https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...
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