[HN Gopher] Overbite Project: Why still use Gopher? What makes G...
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Overbite Project: Why still use Gopher? What makes Gopher relevant?
Author : Tomte
Score : 58 points
Date : 2024-05-12 11:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gopher.floodgap.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gopher.floodgap.com)
| ecliptik wrote:
| While it's focus is Gemini, the LaGrange Browser [1] supports
| Gopher too (as well as Finger and possibility FTP in the future)
| on almost all modern platforms. Bombadillo [2] is a great TUI
| gopher client as well.
|
| Setting up a Gopherhole is relatively easy, as most
| pubnix/tilderverse communities offer Gopher hosting for free [3].
|
| 1. https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/
|
| 2. https://bombadillo.colorfield.space/
|
| 3. https://tilde.wiki/wiki/Gopher
| detourdog wrote:
| This is good to know. I used to enjoy gopher browsing. Compared
| to today's web saturated mediascape gopher publishing might
| make sense on the internet.
| duodecimal wrote:
| The web took over, but as discussed on HN before, the University
| of Minnesota did their best to help kill Gopher when they tried
| to license it for commercial use.
|
| University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy (1993)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38150331
|
| The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol (2016)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269784
| dwheeler wrote:
| > the University of Minnesota did their best to help kill
| Gopher when they tried to license it for commercial use.
|
| They didn't just "help" kill gopher. They assassinated and
| buried it. As soon as they announced this, most people dropped
| gopher like it was radioactive waste. It was widely perceived
| as greedy overreach by almost everyone else.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Internet Archive says this is at least from 2008:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20080915042719/https://gopher.fl...
|
| The arguments feel quite weak. Gopher doesn't bring much to the
| table IMO, the simplicity is overshadowed by lack of content and
| interactivity (same problem applies to Gemini).
| leephillips wrote:
| The simplicity, especially the constrained specification, is
| part of the appeal for some people and part of the reason for
| the (mild) resurgence of interest in Gopher, Gemini, and
| related protocols: https://www.linux-
| magazine.com/Issues/2021/245/The-Rise-of-t...
| anthk wrote:
| gopher://magical.fish gopher://sdf.org gopher://hngopher.com
| ghssds wrote:
| Counterpoints: What makes Gopher irrelevant?
|
| 1. Only one byte to specify filetype in the protocol, with only a
| few filetypes being being defined in the protocol, the remaining
| being unofficial and implementation-dependent. Most filetypes
| that are defined still are ambiguous.
|
| 2. No support for Unicode in the protocol, or even for any
| character set but ISO-8859-1. Non-europeans can eat shit and die.
|
| 3. No support for encryption nor compression in the protocol.
|
| 4. Any implementation supporting an above-mentioned feature is
| operating out of specification.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| They were talking about finally adding MIME types to Gopher+ in
| 2002, which I think was too late to compete with the Web.
| Sniffing for UCS-2 or UTF-8 or Latin-1 might have worked or
| might have given us more
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake.
| paulddraper wrote:
| And what happened since 2002?
|
| Irrelevance?
| contingencies wrote:
| Counterpoints: why are these not a big deal?
|
| 1. With libmagic these days this is sort of not that useful.
| Type "9" means _Item is a binary file. Client must decide what
| to do with it._ Just use type 9 and then determine the filetype
| using the first few bytes.
|
| 2. Screams for an upgrade. Could assume if encryption is used,
| UTF-8 is the new default charset.
|
| 3. Most TCP services are wrappable, eg. over SSL or ssh with
| compression.
|
| 4. Fortunately the once-feared gopher police, famed as both
| jaw-droppingly vicious and most morally dubious in method, have
| long since retired to the Bahamas.
| spc476 wrote:
| 1. I agree.
|
| 2. This would be Gemini. Most people here don't like it
| either. Also, most gopher sites I visit use UTF-8, and my
| client (which I wrote---it's not hard) hasn't had an issue
| with mojibake.
|
| 3. It's not as simple as wrapping TLS around the TCP
| connection. [1]
|
| 4. There were once gopher police?
|
| [1] I talk about it here:
| https://boston.conman.org/2019/03/31.1
| contingencies wrote:
| 3. Break backward compatibility. It's fine. Nobody needs to
| run an old client these days. I'd worry more about ensuring
| curl and wget have support than old gopher clients.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > No support for encryption nor compression in the protocol.
|
| I consider it a feature.
|
| Compression adds complexity. Not only you have to implement
| compression itself, but also a way to communicate what type of
| compression you want. It also makes the protocol less readable
| though packet dumps and make using simple tools like netcat
| more complex. Simplicity is a big reason for using Gopher.
|
| Encryption adds _a lot_ of complexity, same argument, but ten
| times worse.
|
| In addition to complexity, I don't really like the idea of
| HTTPS-style encryption for a niche like this, for the following
| reasons:
|
| - HTTPS gives only limited privacy protection, an eavesdropper
| can still see your IP address and the server you are trying to
| reach. It is not TOR.
|
| - The signature aspect only ensures you are connecting to the
| right server, not that the content has been tempered with. It
| is not PGP.
|
| - Encryption is useful to send secrets, like passwords or
| credit card numbers. Why would you want use passwords? Isn't
| the big idea to make information publicly available? Why hide
| things behind passwords? And why would you want to send a
| credit card number, do you want e-commerce on your platform?
| Not having encryption is a way to ensure all information on
| your small network is freely accessible and stays this way.
|
| And if you disagree with regard to encryption, maybe take a
| look at Gemini.
|
| 1 and 2 are good points.
| chpatrick wrote:
| > Non-europeans can eat shit and die.
|
| And Hungarians...
| lupusreal wrote:
| The article forgets the most important reason to use gopher; it
| filters plebs!
| bombcar wrote:
| gopher over Tor! I wonder if gopher://....onion could be made
| to work ...
| darreninthenet wrote:
| Apparently so, check out:
|
| gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/1/
|
| They have a Tor link on their page
| dusted wrote:
| gopher://dusted.dk/0/pages/phlog/2023-10-29.txt
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >The misconception that the modern renaissance of Gopherspace is
| simply a reaction to "Web overload" is unfortunately..
|
| It isn't a misconception. Gopher is small underground counter-
| culture to the WWW. Lack of corporations, lack of ads, and lack
| of complex tracking is what keeps Gopher organic and therefore
| relevant. These other things, low computing power and fixed
| hierarchy, are nice-to-haves. It would collapse into darkness if
| Google were to begin indexing it and injecting ads onto it.
| mannyv wrote:
| I remember the Harvard OIT people had a gopher server running on
| their new mainframe back in the day. They were all excited about
| it too.
|
| Once the web guys implemented inline images it was pretty much
| all over.
| navanchauhan wrote:
| Shameless plug, but I am working on a Swift Client/Server Gopher
| implementation[0] used in a SwiftUI app for
| macOS/iOS/visionOS[1]. I will soon be making a Gtk implementation
| for Linux!
|
| Why? It is a pretty simple protocol to implement, and I love
| reading people's daily phlogs
|
| [0] https://github.com/navanchauhan/swift-gopher
|
| [1] https://web.navan.dev/iGopherBrowser/
| jessamyn wrote:
| We stay on top of keeping MetaFilter's gopher server working.
|
| gopher://gopher.metafilter.com
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(page generated 2024-05-13 23:00 UTC)