FAIR

Federated and Independent Repositories

FAIR - Federated and Independent Repositories

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FAIR - Federated and Independent Repositories

by FAIR Contributors

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Description

Many features in WordPress rely on requests to WordPress.org services, including update checks, translations, emojis, and more. Services on WordPress.org are expensive to maintain and centralized. In order to help strengthen the future of the whole WordPress ecosystem, FAIR was built to reduce reliance and burden on the central WordPress.org services.

This plugin configures your site to use FAIR implementations of the key services that are currently centralized on WordPress.org.

Features

The FAIR plugin implements federated or local versions of the following features in WordPress:

  • Version checks and updates to WordPress, plugins, and themes
  • Language packs and translations
  • Events and News feeds in the dashboard
  • Images used on the About screen, Credits screen, and elsewhere
  • Browser and server health checks
  • Other APIs such as the Credits API, Secret Keys API, and Importers API
  • Twemoji images for emojis
  • Installation and updating of packages direct from their source repository, without talking to any centralized server

The default FAIR provider in this plugin is AspireCloud from AspirePress. The AspirePress team were key in helping the FAIR project get off the ground. As the FAIR project grows and other providers come online you will be able to configure your chosen FAIR provider within the plugin.

In addition to the key FAIR implementations, a few other features in WordPress are configured by this plugin to reduce reliance and burden on other centralized external services:

  • User avatars can optionally be uploaded locally as an alternative to the Gravatar service
  • Media features provided by OpenVerse are disabled, pending discussion and work by the FAIR working group
  • Ping services are configured to use IndexNow in place of Pingomatic

Data Privacy

FAIR is built to reduce external dependencies and keep your site as self-contained as possible. However, some essential features require connecting to remote services in order to function correctly. This section details which features involve remote requests, what data may be transmitted, and the specific third-party providers involved. Review the list below to understand exactly where and why your site may communicate with external endpoints.

  • Search engine pings when a post is published are handled by IndexNow.
  • Installation and updates of all WordPress Packages (core, plugins, themes) are via AspireCloud from AspirePress (or other mirror as configured).
  • PHP versions are provided by php.net
  • Twemoji (emoji assets) are retrieved by jsDeliver

In addition we self-host certain features that could not be properly protected on our API servers as an intermediary. All data collected from FAIR servers fall under the Linux Foundation Policies and Terms of Use for Hosted Projects; additionally, the server itself is open source. These services include:

  • WordPress Events (https://api.fair.pm/fair/v1/events) - Retrieved from The WP World hourly and then cached on our servers. No user data is sent to The WP World.
  • WordPress Planet/News (https://planet.fair.pm/atom.xml)

FAIR can be installed manually by downloading the latest zip from releases and install it via your WordPress admin dashboard.

Uninstallation

To remove the FAIR plugin and its features, you can deactivate and delete the plugin. There are no changes made to your database outside of the plugin settings, and no external files are edited. FAIR is a self-contained plugin, using the accepted WordPress standards and practices.

[unreleased]

1.1.0 / 2025-11-02

  • Workflows: When detecting POT changes, ignore the creation date. by @costdev in #274
  • Add a Playground link to a PR. by @costdev in #278
  • Banner defaults should be empty string, not null by @afragen in #280
  • Fix icon dimension check to match protocol requirements by @meszarosrob in #282
  • Add WP-CLI support by @costdev in #277
  • [browserslist] Update browser regex by @github-actions[bot] in #275
  • Generate POT - 2025-10-04 by @github-actions[bot] in #285
  • Add more data to get_package_data(), renamed from get_update_data() by @afragen in #286
  • Generate POT - 2025-10-09 by @github-actions[bot] in #289
  • [browserslist] Update browser regex by @github-actions[bot] in #298
  • Add last_updated to metadata document by @costdev in #262
  • Add plugin banner & icon assets by @joedolson in #306
  • Skip avatar URLs or link markup that do not contain secure.gravatar.com. by @costdev in #302
  • Modify Add Plugins message. by @afragen in #305
  • fix duplicate entries in featured tab by @afragen in #307
  • Fix plugin search, broke with escaping by @afragen in #309
  • [browserslist] Update browser regex by @github-actions[bot] in #312
  • Sort plugin modal tabs by @afragen in #310
  • Patch update browsers bin by @ramonfincken in #44
  • [bump-version] Bump version to 1.1.0 by @github-actions[bot] in #313
  • Generate POT - 2025-10-27 by @github-actions[bot] in #303

1.0.0 / 2025-09-23

  • [browserslist] Update browser regex by @github-actions[bot] in #209
  • Add release asset header by @afragen in #211
  • [browserslist] Update browser regex by @github-actions[bot] in #214
  • Add defaults for missing data by @afragen in #220
  • Use wpcache* instead of get|set_transient by @afragen in #218
  • Fix dashboard news widget and add caching by @afragen in #223
  • Generate POT - 2025-08-17 by @github-actions[bot] in #224
  • [browserslist] Update browser regex by @github-actions[bot] in #226
  • Use local metadata when attempting to get Mini-FAIR data from same site as package is registered by * @afragen in #221
  • Remove primary dashboard widget news feed by @afragen in #229
  • Increase planets items by @afragen in #230
  • Icons: Guard against a non-array updates response by @afragen in #244
  • Prevent pings of unpublished URLs. by @peterwilsoncc in #246
  • Change from wpcache to _transient for fair-plugin by @afragen in #248
  • [browserslist] Update browser regex by @github-actions[bot] in #232
  • Use bridged data from legacy endpoints by @rmccue in #250
  • Add the "Activate" button to get_action_button(). by @costdev in #251
  • Check if the package is installed before trying to set its filepath and slug. by @costdev in #253
  • [browserslist] Update browser regex by @github-actions[bot] in #254
  • Update class-lite.php to use wp_remote_get by @afragen in #256
  • Verify signatures when downloading packages by @costdev in #247
  • Add package domain validation by @rmccue in #243
  • Ensure the user is allowed to activate the plugin. by @costdev in #260
  • Remove debug message upon successful signature verification. by @costdev in #259
  • Rename package from fair to fairpm by @rmccue in #263
  • Only support PLC DIDs for now. by @costdev in #261
  • Allow searching by DID by @costdev in #258
  • Add some contact info to composer.json by @philipjohn in #119
  • [bump-version] Bump version to 1.0.0 by @github-actions[bot] in #264
  • Generate POT - 2025-09-23 by @github-actions[bot] in #265

0.4.1 / 2025-07-31

  • Update plugin.php version 0.3.0 -> 0.4.0 by @handpressed in #202
  • Add workflow to bump the version by @rmccue in #203
  • [bump-version] Bump version to 0.4.1 by @github-actions[bot] in #206
  • Fix header version bump by @rmccue in #207

0.4.0 / 2025-07-29

  • un-escape class-lite.php for Ryan by @afragen in #121
  • Add random color SVG icons for updates by @afragen in #120
  • Add some phpcs fixes to FAIR/Icons by @afragen in #133
  • Add and apply coding standards. by @costdev in #129
  • Use const in icons/namespace.php by @afragen in #134
  • add Git Updater Lite based updater for packages by @afragen in #131
  • Declare the plugin as network-only by @johnbillion in #135
  • Updated italian translation by @andreg in #118
  • Remove the main constraint when running the PHPCS workflow. by @costdev in #140
  • Update CONTRIBUTING.md by @jorydotcom in #146
  • Refactor for reuse of functions elsewhere by @afragen in #150
  • add check to update transient for default icons check by @afragen in #149
  • [browserslist] Update browser regex by @github-actions[bot] in #141
  • Only exclude class-lite.php from PHPCS by @afragen in #157
  • Ping IndexNow for newly 404ing URLs. by @peterwilsoncc in #160
  • Add WP Core compat.php by @afragen in #164
  • Make compat.php compliant with the coding standard. by @costdev in #165
  • refactoring avatar settings by @norcross in #123
  • Fix code standards issues by @afragen in #171
  • Replace strpos() with newer str_*() functions. by @costdev in #166
  • Split compat.php into php-polyfill.php and wp-polyfill.php by @afragen in #170
  • Add installer for FAIR protocol by @rmccue in #71
  • Remove unused use statement in FAIR\Updater. by @costdev in #194
  • Fix an inconsistent error code in parse_did(). by @costdev in #191
  • Generate POT - 2025-07-28 by @github-actions[bot] in #195
  • Fix context message for platform string. by @joedolson in #198
  • Remove Packages, Updater from feature flag by @afragen in #197
  • Generate POT - 2025-07-29 by @github-actions[bot] in #200
  • Fix the documented type and default value of MetadataDocument::$sections. by @costdev in #193
  • Ensure the returned MetadataDocument ID matches the DID in the request. by @costdev in #192
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