The winds of change: WordPress, Part II

Hey! Lots has happened since our update and pivot to help try and salvage the WordPress situation and make some good out of it.

Thanks to @thekevingeary and @markjszymanski, I had a chance to speak about the Riff.CC Project in the context of the WordPress controversies. Attached is a transcript.

You can listen at https://x.com/i/spaces/1BdGYEgamWEGX/peek, starting at 1:13:05, if you want to listen to the speech.

We'll be capturing a lot of our plans and thoughts over the coming weeks as the team tries to tackle WordPress as a problem space and move towards Orbiter being modular and capable, so that we can achieve these goals and more.

Kevin:
"Alright, we have Wings and Gregg, they're gonna be our final two speakers.
[...]
We're gonna bring on Wings."

Wings:
"Hello!
It's been really fun actually listening to you guys.
You have really interesting opinions on open source.

I work in open source, full-time,
so it's kinda cool, like, hearing people be skeptical about it.

But that's not what I'm going to talk about today.

I want to talk specifically about the main thing I see as like WordPress being so powerful,
really.

It might surprise you as someone who works in open source,
but really I think it's mainly the ease of use.

I think WordPress is a public good at this point.
I think it's too important to fail—
I wouldn't say it's too big to fail,
I think it definitely can.

So I'd like to give a quick shoutout to a person named Jeremy,
who sort of raised the idea of making a decentralized plugin directory.

The idea of a decentralized plugin directory is really that the major problem right now that we have—
and I mean, Matt's actions aside,
which I won't even comment on—

any of that,
because other people have said much better things,
much more eloquently—

what I will say is,
there's two groups now already working on a decentralized plugin ecosystem for WordPress,
for both themes and plugins.

Myself,
I'm working on a thing I already was working on,
called Riff.CC Project,
you can see in my profile if you want to check it out,
but we're basically an open source,
defederated system for doing immutable libraries.

Large, immortal libraries.

We saw this thing,
Jeremy brought me on to,
he's in the chat,
below me a bit.

He saw this problem of WordPress having total control of the plugin directory on WordPress.org,
I saw this thread,
and what I did is,
I threw my entire team at it.

So we're an open source project,
we have been for a long time,
I've spent $80,000 on the project so far,
that is publicly accounted for on a public ledger that you can look at.

And we're not blockchain,
we use OpenCollective,
and this is not a call for donations,
I don't want money.

Basically,
I want to just talk about the idea of decentralizing the plugin directory
and why it would be possible.

And while I'm at this,
just a quick shoutout to a different effort by @AspirePressOrg,
they're trying to do the same thing.

They're taking a more traditional approach than we are,
so I want to give them a shoutout because regardless of whether we "win" or they win,
ultimately we're both actually in alignment that this has to be a "no one wins individually" thing.

We want to build a system where everyone who wants to contribute to the effort of making this archive of plugins available—
more than archive—
a live version—
we think we have practical solutions for building that right now.

I'm spending $20,000 on my team over the next month building it with no real chance of return,
because we actually care about this so much that we think it has to be a public good,
that it HAS to be preserved.

So,
very nervous talking about it,
because frankly my project has been in the dark for a long time,
been worked on since 2009.

But we see this as a massive use case that we can immediately start making a dent on.

We're going to be making a federated version—
we call it Defederation—
of the WordPress plugin directory.

The idea is everyone gets what's called a Lens,
and they can put their own plugin onto their Lens,
and then Lenses can copy each other.

So the technology we're building allows people to build,
essentially it looks like a regular website,
but it can follow other people who are running the same software.

And when it does this,
it combines the people following each other into one website.

What this then lets you do is we can sidestep the problem of
"okay, now someone is running the only copy of this thing."

Everyone that follows each other in a common graph,
for people who like set theory will understand this,
everyone who is following each other will be functionally equivalent.

The nature of the technology we're using,
which is IPFS,
which doesn't depend on a blockchain or have any kind of encumbrance there—
we're intentionally NOT putting blockchain or cryptocurrency into the base layer—
because we think it should be neutral—
basically IPFS will make it so that anyone in the world is hosting a copy of that plugin,
and the exact hash of that plugin,
you will be able to retrieve it.

As long as you can know what the name of the plugin is.

So I'm trying to gloss over some of the technicals,
you're always welcome to ask me if you want to.

Essentially,
we're just using some really modern tech to make an archive that just is impossible to really take down,
of all the plugins.

What this will end up doing is,
really the way I see it is,
6 or 7 really big community members of WordPress will probably run a major Lens that people congregate around.

Each Lens has its own moderation policy and they all kinda work together to—
the idea is you federate with someone that matches your vibe.
Right?

They have the same moderation policy,
they respect open source.
That sort of thing.

If someone stops following your policy,
and is no longer someone good to work with,
you defederate from them.

So what you end up with is now you can run this along trust rails that exist in society already,
instead of going "Oh,
we'll just solve it with decentralization and crypto."

This basically says that the people that are trusted in the WordPress community already can sort of take the role of congregating around these large sites,
to run this archive.

And ultimately this will end up with everyone being able to have a full copy of every single plugin ever,
and then we also already have ways of adding some reputation systems so we can stop it from becoming full of like,
spam and evil stuff.

So we have a lot of really good thoughts but I want to leave the floor open for anyone else who has questions,
because that's a LOT.

I'd love for any attention or anything is great,
but we're not in it for money or any kind of power.
We want to see this problem solved."

There's more we'll edit in later, but it felt like a good thing to post so people can start getting some idea as to the things we're trying to do.

~ Wings