The FAIR project - Package distribution in WordPress, decentralized.pptx

By: Pekka Kortelainen, WordPress Growth Solutions Wizard, Seravo Oy.

1. The FAIR project – Package distribution in WordPress, decentralized Mindtrek 2025 October 7, 2025 Pekka Kortelainen – WordPress Growth Solutions Wizard [email protected]

2. $ whois seravo.com 10+ years of Premium Hosting for WordPress Based in Tampere, operating globally Multiple server locations on 2 continents, 4 countries Staff WordPress Experts in Customer Support System Administrators Growth & Sales Development From 19 employees in 2024 to 31 in 2025

3. Work with WordPress Freelancer since 2013 -> Seravo Customer Support 03/2020 - 03/2024 Systems 03/2024 - 06/2025 Growth 06/2025 -> Conferences 2023: Lisbon, WCEU (Athens), WCUS (National Harbor, Maryland), WCFI (Tampere), Gerolstein 2024: Vienna, Porto, WCEU (Turin), Hague, Mindtrek Talks at Porto and Turin Talk at Mindtrek 2024 2025: Lisbon, WCEU (Basel), Lithuania WP Suomi coming up, A/V coordinator Interests Hardware, software, tech in general WP-CLI Profiling and speed optimization WordCamps, other conferences & the community around the WordPress project $ whois pekka

4. TLDR; WordPress

5. WordPress in a nutshell Originally a blog platform, eventually growing into a multi-functional Content Management System (CMS) “ WordPress is used by 60.7% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 43.3% of all websites.” Source: https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress Extendable with plugins and themes E.g. Drupal calls extending features modules

6. WordPress as a project & common confusion WordPress Foundation Non-profit Automattic For-profit wordpress.org Plugin & theme repository Support forums wordpress.com Hosting by Automattic WordPress Foundation wordpress.org Plugins & Themes Automattic wordpress.com Trademarks Exclusive Commercial License

7. Supply Chain Attack September 21, 2024 / WordCamp US CEO of Automattic and Director of WordPress Foundation publicly criticizes WP Engine, one of the largest hosting companies for WordPress of brand confusion, making profit off the WordPress trademark etc. September 23, 2024 Cease-and-desist cases both ways with Automattic and WP Engine September 25, 2024 WP Engine gets blocked from using wordpress.org resources Updates for WP Engine customers compromised, manual actions required October 12, 2024 ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) with over two million installs is taken over and forked by Automattic and introduced as “Secure Custom Fields” Never before a plugin under active development has been taken down or over without consent wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields Started redirecting to the forked plugin, not the original Download counts, reviews were the same Users think they are installing ACF, but getting different code This evaluates as a supply chain attack

8. The FAIR project Federated And Independent Repositories

9. FAIR is introduced June 5, 2025 / WordCamp Europe 2025, Basel, Switzerland Free side event, Alt Ctrl Org An event by the community, for the community Lots of contributors involved from the community

10. Key features & points Similar distribution of packages as with Linux distributions The user is in control on what sources they choose to use Ability for users to opt-out from wordpress.org repository Decentralized Not governed by a single entity Backed by The Linux Foundation Protocol description & code available as open source “As the FAIR project grows and other providers come online you will be able to configure your chosen FAIR provider within the plugin.” https://github.com/fairpm/fair-plugin

11. Is the ecosystem you utilize protected?

12. Kiitos! Thank You! Time for questions!