Version 1.4.1 RC 1 of FAIR Connect is a release candidate for a bug fix release to version 1.4. This release incorporates a few key fixes to issues that showed up in the release.
Bug Fixes
Account for package metadata that doesn’t include a filename when deriving hashed filenames (#515)
Ensure the correct cache type for DID document (#504)
Remove extraneous class call to FAIR\Updater\Updater->run() during AJAX install (#515)
Update fairpm/did-manager-wordpress to 0.0.8 to fix parsing of plugin file header fields and other fixes.
Features Included
This is a minor release, and no new features were added. However, during this release cycle we did add extensive PHP unit testing.
Upgrade Notes
This is a bug fix release that maintains backward compatibility with version 1.4. All users are encouraged to upgrade to benefit from these fixes.
Install FAIR 1.4.1 RC1
Ready to explore FAIR?
Install the FAIR Connectrelease ZIP to search for verified plugins from both official and independent sources.
Install the FAIR Beta Tester plugin to support automatic updates to development versions
With our newest release, 1.4, FAIR Connect (formerly known as “The FAIR Plugin”) has the DID manager fully integrated and has improved (dev) flows and some bug fixes.
Re-architected Updater Class into a registry, so it will only be instantiated once instead of per plugin or theme thus limiting the number of hooks fired (#428, fixing #427)
Hardened hash validation when there’s no valid hash (#436, #437)
This is a feature release that maintains backward compatibility with version 1.3. All users are encouraged to upgrade to take advantage of these improvements.
Try FAIR 1.4 today
Ready to explore FAIR?
Install the FAIR Connectrelease ZIP to search for verified plugins from both official and independent sources.
Today, Joost de Valk and Karim Marucchi announced that they are stepping away from their work on FAIR. We want to thank them publicly for their vision, energy, and willingness to take on hard problems that helped bring FAIR from a concept to a working technical reality in a remarkably short time.
We also want to be clear: FAIR isn’t stopping.
We understand and respect Joost and Karim’s decision. The challenges they faced: the reluctance of large ecosystem players to invest in neutral infrastructure, the misaligned incentives–these are real. We won’t pretend otherwise. But those challenges don’t define the entirety of what FAIR is or where it’s headed.
It’s a reality that FAIR hasn’t yet been able to secure the funding or board participation from the WordPress ecosystem needed to sustain the project at that scale. This fact doesn’t change the value or success of what has been built, even if it changes where we take it next.
FAIR’s work remains active under the Linux Foundation, which remains supportive of the project. We look forward to trying new approaches to solving these problems.
FAIR was never just about WordPress
FAIR is a federated package management protocol for the modern era, incorporating ideas from the likes of ATProto and established principles for software development. WordPress was the first reference implementation, and FAIR remains a working solution for that platform. But the architecture was always designed to be platform-agnostic. The problems FAIR solves are not WordPress-specific. Supply chain security, decentralized distribution, trust and verification are industry-wide issues and they’re becoming more urgent, not less.
The EU’s Cyber Resilience Act arrives in December 2027 and when it does, software supply chain integrity becomes a regulatory requirement – demonstrating provenance, security scanning, and traceable update mechanisms. FAIR’s architecture is built with exactly this kind of trustworthiness in mind.
We haven’t given up on WordPress. We still welcome contributors and ecosystem leaders to join us so we can continue advancing the work.
AI changes the math on trust
There’s a great amount of conversation right now about what AI means for CMS platforms and software development in general. AI-assisted development is producing code at a pace and volume unheard of. When anyone can generate a plugin, an extension, or an application in an afternoon, the question shifts from “can I find software?” to “can I trust it?”, or just “is this software even needed?”. FAIR’s trust scoring and verification layer is more relevant in today’s world, not less.
What’s next: TYPO3 and CloudFest
The open source CMS TYPO3 community and its technical leadership see the value in what FAIR is building. At the upcoming CloudFest Hackathon, we’ll be working together to bring FAIR’s federated distribution model to the TYPO3 extension ecosystem, building client-side integration, aggregator pipelines, and extending the protocol for TYPO3-specific distribution.
This is exactly the kind of cross-ecosystem adoption that validates FAIR’s design. In Europe especially, digital sovereignty and control over software supply chains are concerns driving real infrastructure decisions.
We recently published a roadmap for 2026, and the technical vision hasn’t changed. FAIR continues to address a genuine need for WordPress and other open source ecosystems. We released FAIR Connect 1.3 this week, with version 1.4 and TYPO3 support on the horizon. Without a formal board to wait on, the community has more room to move. Design, branding, and other project decisions can be made directly by the FAIR community. Watch for more progress in the coming months.
The work continues
We have a solid technical foundation, a working protocol, transparent governance with the stability of the Linux Foundation, and a growing community of contributors who believe in secure software distribution removed from single points of control. The road ahead involves deepening trust scoring, expanding ecosystem support, and continuing to build the tools that make FAIR practical for organizations managing real software at scale.
We are grateful to Joost and Karim for helping FAIR get here. We’re excited to see what’s next and we’re only getting started.
If you want to get involved, you’ll be welcomed – please join us!
From discussions early in 2025, FAIR was founded under the Linux Foundation and publicly announced at the AltCtrl.org conference in Basel, Switzerland on June 6, 2025. At the event, it was presented shortly after Matt Leach’s demonstration of the AspirePress project to launch a public mirror of the WordPress repository, served by AspireCloud, with support by Fastly. A LF press release was distributed to media outlets for publication at the same time.
Early 2025 involved adopting a governance model, setting objectives, and engaging with the Linux Foundation for oversight and support. In addition to drafting the FAIR Protocol, we prepared the FAIR Connect plugin for release at this event as a proof of concept for technical independence. Working closely with AspirePress, the plugin connects to AspireCloud for software updates.
In the midst of all the other efforts during mid-2025, we also launched a basic website. We created and published initial documentation, which we extended to include our moderation spec and began work on a trust model for applying it. Following the initial release announcement, several new projects were initiated or adopted from AspirePress.
We worked on improving AspireCloud‘ search queries and its API, extending it to incorporate some initial FAIR Protocol requirements. This done, we began aggregating several software sources outside of the WordPress.org mirror. These sources are served by by FAIR Beacon, which we launched mid-year. Meanwhile, FAIR’s flagship Connect plugin saw ongoing updates, including the addition of WP-CLI support.
As we were shipping more software, we renamed most of them in late 2025 to avoid confusion. By this time, the software suite included:
FAIR Connect
Formerly “The Fair Plugin”, Connect is a WordPress plugin that improves performance and privacy by disconnecting services from wordpress.org, replacing them with local functions or third-party APIs, and serving software updates from AspireCloud.
FAIR Beacon
Beacon is a WordPress plugin (formerly “Mini-Fair”) that creates API endpoints to serve metadata for federated plugins, including package update URIs on Git platforms such as GitHub, GitLab, and Gitea.
FAIR Explorer
Formerly AspireExplorer, this WordPress plugin provides a publicly browseable and searchable index of available plugins and themes indexed by AspireCloud. See it in action by exploring packages on fair.pm.
AspireCloud
AspireCloud will retain its original name to honour the work done by the AspirePress project to launch a public mirror of the software from the official WordPress repository. As a package aggregator, it indexes available software and offers an API for discovering package information and download locations.
FAIR Forge
Newly launched in late 2025, Forge is itself a suite of tools to be used in reformatting WordPress packages to meet FAIR specifications, and to verify that all federated packages meet minimum standards for security and best practices. In addition to confirming guideline compliance, the tools will be able to gather specific signals used for calculating a trust score for each package FAIR distributes.
Engage.
Several FAIR developers and advocates made podcast appearances and gave interviews, as well as presentations at a number of events, from local meetups to larger conferences. These include Ryan McCue’s excellent talk at LoopConf in September and Brent Toderash’s presentation on supply chain security at WordCamp Canada in October. (Material from that talk is included in our post on rethinking how WordPress software is distributed.)
In November 2025, FAIR partnered with Patchstack in a one-day “hackathon”, delivering proofs-of-concept for bringing software vulnerability information directly to WordPress administrators’ dashboards. To do this, a Labeller was developed to apply specific labels to packages using Patchstack’s API for CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) reporting. When integrated, searches for packages in the FAIR network can proactively label vulnerable packages. Next, a Policy Engine was developed which can enforce a security policy to prevent installing packages with known critical vulnerabilities. This work will soon converge with FAIR Forge to implement FAIR’s Moderation (Labelling) Specification and apply a robust new Trust Model.
The event was an unqualified success. In addition to CloudFest’s own report, it was reported on by WP-Content.co and by The Repository. CloudFest media partners were on hand as well, with Mark Szymanski recording an interview with hackathon project leads Elliot Taylor (Patchstack), Carrie Dils (FAIR TSC Co-Chair), and Brent Toderash (FAIR TSC).
Envision.
2025 ended on a high note for FAIR. A scant six months from its public announcement, FAIR has been represented at many regional and global events. FAIR Connect went through a number of releases during that time, with a number of other software and documentation projects being picked up in the process. By the time the year ended, the FAIR TSC had adopted a planned release cadence and roadmap for 2026, which promises more major steps on the road to federated software distribution.
One year on, FAIR has gone from a conceptual discussion to a suite of at least nine software products in active development with project contributors in time zones all around the globe.
Version 1.2.2 of FAIR Connect is a fast follow up to our version 1.2.1 release. This release fixes a fatal error introduced in 1.2.1 that impacts the updating process.
If you previously updated to 1.2.1, you will need to perform this update manually.
Version 1.2.1 of FAIR Connect is a fast follow up to our version 1.2 release. This release incorporates a few key fixes to issues that showed up in the release.
FAIR Plugin is now FAIR Connect. This is one of several name changes across FAIR, aimed to help clarify what each part of the project does. (#351, #352)
Other changes include:
Mini FAIR -> FAIR Beacon – Make your packages available to the FAIR network.
AspireExplore -> FAIR Explorer – Explore packages in the FAIR network.
Improved Compatibility
Improved Avatar Handling: Custom avatars are now supported when Gravatar is enabled. (#349)
Updated Browser List: The browser compatibility feature now includes an updated browser list to provide more accurate compatibility warnings. (#325)
More Performant and Stable
IndexNow requests are now handled earlier to bypass unneeded database queries. (#317)
IndexNow notifications are now skipped during imports. (#319)
Upgrade Notes
This is a feature release that maintains backward compatibility with version 1.1. All users are encouraged to upgrade to take advantage of these improvements.
Try FAIR 1.2 today
Ready to explore FAIR?
Install the FAIR Connectrelease ZIP to search for verified plugins from both official and independent sources.
Introducing FAIR 1.1, our newest release as part of our regular 6-week release train. We’ve got some great new features, as well as refinements of existing ones.
One of the big features we’ve included in 1.1 is WP-CLI support for plugins, making it possible to manage plugins directly from the command line using their DID. We’ve heard from a lot of people that they’d love to be able to manage FAIR-distributed plugins using the CLI – and now you can!
We’ve also improved consistency and accuracy with a few parts of our user interface, helping to clarify the experience for everyone.
All of this, plus loads of other fixes below – as always, thanks to our amazing contributors.
Our plan is to release regularly on a roughly 6 week cadence to make sure we’re always getting the latest and greatest out to you.
We’ve also been cooking in the background on other components in the FAIR ecosystem, including significant work on AspireCloud and AspireExplorer – plus, we’ve just wrapped up our hackathon with Patchstack, building the groundwork for our labeler system (more on that soon!).
FAIR Plugin now includes WP-CLI support for plugins, making it possible to manage plugins directly from the command line using their DID. (#277)
Better User Experience
More Accurate Update Dates: Plugin cards now display a more accurate “Last Updated” date, helping users better assess plugin maintenance status. (#262)
Consistent Modal Tabs: Tabs in the “View Details” and “More Details” modals now display in a consistent, predictable order. (#310)
Improved Compatibility
Improved Avatar Handling: Only Gravatar URLs are replaced, ensuring other avatar services are not impacted. (#302)
Updated Browser List: The browser compatibility feature now includes an updated browser list to provide more accurate compatibility warnings. (#312)
Improved FAIR Identifiers
FAIR Plugin Directory Integration: The “Add Plugins” screen now features a “FAIR Plugin Directory” link that takes users directly to https://fair.pm/packages/plugins, replacing the previous WordPress.org Plugin Directory link. (#305)
FAIR Plugin Assets: FAIR Plugin now has its own placeholder banner and icon. (#306)
Upgrade Notes
This is a feature release that maintains backward compatibility with version 1.0. All users are encouraged to upgrade to take advantage of these improvements.
Try FAIR 1.1 today
Ready to explore FAIR?
Install the FAIR Pluginrelease ZIP to search for verified plugins from both official and independent sources.