Linux Foundation introduced The project fair (Federal and Independent Repositories), aimed at providing a decentralized ecosystem alternative for the spread of plugins and the design of the WordPress Web-Content system. Fair allows you to create your own repositories and mirrors for the delivery of plugins on its servers, regardless of the conflicting centralized hosting WordPress.org and WP Engine. The code is written in PHP and is distributed under the license gplv2+.
The following components form the platform:
- Plugin to the content control system WordPress, replacing appeals to WordPress.org, WordPress.com, Gravatar.com and other servers of the company Automattic, used to check updates and send notifications, on alternative handlers using the Fair protocol.
- Server to support the repository using a decentralized model of packet management for plugins and topics of WordPress. The developers have the opportunity to deploy the mirrors of existing repositories (for example, WordPress.org) or creating their servers to spread the additions to WordPress. Servers are logically combined into a single federal catalog.
- Plugin mini Fair Repo to convert your site into the Fair repository. The component allows the creators of the plugins and the release of the design directly from their servers to distribute additions to WordPress and use the usual tools for this. Mini Fair Repo offers the substitute for the cut-off implementation of the Fair repository for the spread of several packages, not designed for organizing mass hosting.
Fair can be delivered both in the form of a separate plugin and in the form of a Fair Distro distribution, which includes the WordPress platform with pre-installed Fair components. The use of Fair allows you to create separate infrastructures that do not depend on possible locks and are protected from the substitution of packages in a centralized catalog. The need for an independent addition to add-ons arose after the incident, as a result of which the owner of the official catalog of the WordPress.org plugins replaced the A