A few months ago, I had the great opportunity to interview Javier Casares, and I would like to begin by thanking him for generously sharing his knowledge, his passion, and his time. The interview took place shortly after WordCamp Europe 2025, held from June 5–7 in Basel, Switzerland. This is one of the three largest events organized by the global WordPress community and, as always, it was welcomed with great enthusiasm, drawing around 2,000 attendees.
During those days, the usual WordCamp activities took place, including Contributor Day, two days of talks, and a series of Side Events. These side events host parallel initiatives that complement the conference program once the official sessions have ended.
Among them, one event in particular stood out: Alt Ctrl Org. What made this event special? It became the stage for the official launch of the FAIR Project, even though this announcement had not originally been on the event’s agenda, according to Javier Casares,
The Alt Ctrl Org gathering took place on June 6 at 5:00 PM at Klara 13, a venue close to the WordCamp location. The event was supported by companies such as WP Function, TYPO3, Halvar, Krautress, Patchstack, Progress Planner, WP Concierge, Seravo, and Alphosting, as well as individual contributors.
The talks were organized in two parts. The first block focused on Open Source in general, featuring the following presentations:
1.Zoë Kooyman, Executive Director at the Free Software Foundation — Free Software and Why the Terms Matter.
2.Olivier Dobberkau, President of the TYPO3 Association — An Overview of the TYPO3 Association.
3.Vlad-Stefan Harbuz, vlad.website, Open Source Pledge — Collective Governance and How to Fund It.
4.Panel Discussion with Q&A, moderated by Javier Casares, Director of ROBOTSTXT.es.
The second block included:
5.Sé Reed, President and CEO of The WP Community Collective — The Heart of Open Source.
6.Matt Leach (AspirePress) — Distributing and Updating Themes & Plugins with AspirePress.
7.A roundtable discussion titled “The Future of WordPress”, moderated by Francesca Marano, Queen of Partnerships at Patchstack, with the participation of Joost de Valk (Partner at Emilia Capital), Sé Reed (President and CEO of The WP Community Collective), and Sarah Savage (AspirePress).
In simple terms, the FAIR Project, which stands for Federated and Independent Repositories, is a plugin that disconnects WordPress from WordPress.org and provides access to a federated repository from which plugins, themes, and even WordPress itself can be downloaded. Among its goals are compliance with European privacy regulations and avoiding a single point of failure. This functionality is designed to enable the creation of independent repositories for any CMS. The Linux Foundation supports the FAIR Package Manager.
Currently, the FAIR project has taken a new direction. After encountering commercial barriers within the WordPress ecosystem, its promoters announced in February that they would focus their efforts on the TYPO3 ecosystem. The next step will take place at the CloudFest Hackathon in March 2026, where the team will work on integrating FAIR’s federated distribution protocol with the TYPO3 extensions ecosystem. This initiative has been selected as one of the ten official hackathon projects, according to The Repository.
As mentioned earlier, this interview took place some time ago, during the initial phase of FAIR, when WordPress was its primary focus. During our conversation, Javier Casares explained many of the project’s technical details and also spoke extensively about privacy in open source WordPress. Although the context of the project has evolved since then, many of the topics discussed, especially those related to system architecture and privacy, remain highly relevant.
Many thanks to Javier Casares for taking the time to speak with me. And now, let’s dive into the interview.
More about the FAIR Project:
https://www.therepository.email/after-fairs-co-founders-step-back-the-wordpress-community-weighs-in
