Tech Call Agenda - 2025-09-08

[cdils]

Meeting Purpose: Deep-dive, hands-on technical work & implementation for FAIR.

Audience: All technical contributors (not just committee members).

Please add agenda items as comments below and up-vote on the items you'd like to discuss.

Meeting details

• Meeting is September 08, 2025 – 17:30 UTC (see it in your time zone)
• Link to Meeting Calendar

How to join

This call is open to anyone, but note that you need to have a profile/account at OpenProfile.dev to join the call.

Reminders

FAIR is part of the Linux Foundation. Meeting attendees are subject to both the Code of Conduct and the LF Antitrust Policy.

This meeting is recorded and publicly available via your OpenProfile.dev account.

[afragen]

I don't know if this should be discussed here or at the TSC Call.

aspirepress/AspireExplorer#44

[afragen]

Adding fairpm/fair-plugin#227 for @costdev

[toderash]

Brief AspireCloud update from @chuckadams (or me) to allow for testing with updates to the FAIR Plugin & Mini-FAIR Repo indexing.

[toderash]

Discuss & answer fairpm/fair-protocol#4 (comment) for @rmccue ;-)

[rmccue]

Automatically generated notes from today:

FAIR protocol weekly tech call

Mon, 08 Sept 25

Fair Plugin Development Status

• MVP release scheduled for September 23rd (feature freeze)
• Current technical progress tracks well for 1.0 release
• Directory naming issue (exp44) moved to Aspire Press meeting - out of scope for Fair system

Aspire Cloud Integration Progress

• Package endpoint implementation nearly complete
  • Christie’s PR adds fair protocol support
  • Uses fake scheme (fake:slug) for alpha testing
  • Will deploy bleeding edge version to [AspireCloud.io](http://AspireCloud.io) for testing
• Legacy API hack approach confirmed for 1.0
  • Add underscore_fair metadata to existing org-compatible API
  • Reduces client-side changes needed for MVP
  • Post-1.0 can migrate to new protocol endpoints
• Federation capability ready
  • Manual process for adding new repositories
  • Config file based repository management
  • Docker compose setup available for local development

Client-Side Implementation Needs

• Detect hacked-in fair metadata and trigger fair flow
• Directory renaming already implemented in Fair Plugin
  • Ignores zip directory structure, renames to DID hash
  • Handles GitHub’s inconsistent directory naming
• Signature checking PR needs completion
  • Code previously written, needs restoration
  • Mini Fair repo generating signatures (pending PHP key type support)

Forward-Looking Protocol Work

• Metadata signatures specification needed
  • In-band vs out-of-band signature placement
  • Mixing signed original data with aggregator additions
  • Maintains verifiable chain when using aggregators
• Discovery/search APIs not yet implemented
  • Considering Lucene-style query syntax
  • Will be proof-of-concept driven approach
• Technical independence improvements
  • WordPress zip format requirements could be relaxed
  • Not MVP scope but good for backlog

Next Steps

• Chuck: Deploy Aspire Cloud with fair endpoint to .io for testing
• Ryan: Spec out metadata signature approach with concrete proposal
• Andy: Complete renaming PR for fair plugin with DID (async in Slack)
• Colin/Ryan: Continue signature checking implementation
• Team: Manual federation process for new repositories as needed