4 ms·

> In February of 1993, the University of Minnesota made an announcement. In specific commercial usage of the protocol, they would be charging licensing fees. No

by bsuvc 3y ago

> In February of 1993, the University of Minnesota made an announcement. In specific commercial usage of the protocol, they would be charging licensing fees. Not large fees, and not in all cases. But, in some small way, they would be restricting access. I remember gopher and thinking it was pretty useful and easy to use. This decision by them seems to have been a monumental mistake. I'm curious if anyone here knows who at Minnesota made this decision and why. That, to me, is another interesting aspect to this story, but it is understandable people are more reluctant to talk about a failure than a success.

neom 3y ago
https://www.funet.fi/pub/vms/networking/gopher/gopher-software-licensing-policy.ancient https://www.funet.fi/pub/vms/networking/gopher/gopher-softwa... https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/ https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-goph...
- bsuvc 3y ago
  Perfect, thank you so much. That was an interesting read and exactly what I was looking for!
- bruce511 3y ago
  It's interesting to read the first link, but with DNS in mind instead of gopher. All the resource arguments still apply, and indeed DNS is not free, but equally also not expensive. Now granted, DNS has a scarcity component, and if it was free it would basically be consumed by bots and be useless. So back to Gopher. Which was going to license the server software (? - it's unclear, but appears to be targeting the server), and is that not the business model Netscape adopted? Which was then subsumed by Apache and IIS? So I guess I'm somewhat confused as to the actual benefit of the CERN "release" - (allowing others to create servers and clients?) - although clearly it may have been instrumental in gaining mindshare.
  - tpmx 3y ago
    CERN httpd (1990) and NCSA httpd (1993) came before Netscape Netsite (dec 1994) and were both free and open source. When Netscape did launch their server it was relatively expensive starting at $1495. For $5000 you got SSL support: https://books.google.com/books?id=djgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA10 https://books.google.com/books?id=djgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA10. http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1995q1/0010.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1995q1/0010.ht... MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (December 15, 1994) -- Netscape Communications Corporation today announced the availability of the 1.0 versions of its Netscape Navigatorand Netsite server line, including the Netsite Commerce Serverwith integrated security. The availability of these open software products, announced in September, enables Netscape Communications to offer the first complete, secure client/server software system for conducting commerce and exchanging information via the Internet and private TCP/IP networks. Also: https://webdevelopmenthistory.com/1995-apache-microsoft-iis-web-server-market/ https://webdevelopmenthistory.com/1995-apache-microsoft-iis-... According to The Web Server Book, at the second International WWW Conference, held in Chicago in October 1994, a straw poll of attendees showed that “90 percent of present Webmasters used the NCSA server”
  - revelio 3y ago
    Netscape's original business model was selling Navigator. That didn't work for various reasons, like IE being given away for free. So then they switched to server side products. But there wasn't enough depth there, and there were also free web servers, so they couldn't create enough value to both pay for server development and the browser, so they went under. Then MS came along. The browser was undermining their paid-for product, not generating revenue. So IE "went under" (was destaffed). Then AOL came along. For unclear reasons they bought Mozilla and paid for development for a long time, probably losing all their money. They eventually went under. Then Apple came along. They needed a browser of their own because they didn't want to depend on IE any more. But beyond being able to browse the mobile web they didn't need much more than that. Apple has not gone under, but the web is clearly just a feature of their OS and to the extent it gets developed, it's to keep up with Chrome. Then Google came along. They saw what a disaster zone the browser market was, plagued by non-existent or directly contradictory business models, and they feared Microsoft crushing them above all else, just like they'd done for Netscape. So they started paying browser makers to set them as the default, and wrote the Toolbar, and eventually graduated to making their own browser from scratch. AdWords is the closest thing the web ever had to an actual business model. It's reasonable that the people funding Gopher didn't see any commercial future in it, especially as Gopher had search integrated into the protocol. Even Google tried to sell themselves to Yahoo for $1M early on, and were rebuffed, because clearly web stuff wasn't worth that much.
- zugi 3y ago
  > In a time where we are having budgets slashed, it is impossible to justify continued (increasing) resources being allocated to Gopher development unless some good things result for the University of Minnesota. This is a fact of life. Wow. What happened to publicly funded universities doing work to benefit all of mankind? They already had Gopher named after their team mascot, so PR value to the University would always be there. I've seen government-funded universities trying to restrict and license their works a lot lately, and somehow assumed it was a new phenomenon. Perhaps I had an overly rosy view of academia in the past.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    State governments continually cut budget support for tertiary education in the name of fiscal responsibility, so unfortunately many no longer have the means to do so.
    - eru 3y ago
      Cutting budgets for education might even be the right thing to do. But that doesn't necessarily have much to do with research, or at least it shouldn't.
      - bobthepanda 3y ago
        As we saw with newsrooms, when faced with existential crises, even the most traditional firewalls will get scrapped in the race to find nickels in couch cushions.
      - MichaelZuo 3y ago
        I don't see how this line of thinking makes sense. Where do you believe research funds come from?
        eru 3y ago
        My comment was more normative than descriptive: I am saying that research budgets and educations budgets shouldn't be intermingled. (And more generally, that research and education institutions shouldn't be intermingled by default either.) If they were separate institutions, then cutting funding for one doesn't would not impact the other.

by bsuvc 3y ago

neom 3y ago

https://www.funet.fi/pub/vms/networking/gopher/gopher-software-licensing-policy.ancient https://www.funet.fi/pub/vms/networking/gopher/gopher-softwa... https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/ https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-goph...

bsuvc 3y ago
Perfect, thank you so much. That was an interesting read and exactly what I was looking for!
bruce511 3y ago
It's interesting to read the first link, but with DNS in mind instead of gopher. All the resource arguments still apply, and indeed DNS is not free, but equally also not expensive. Now granted, DNS has a scarcity component, and if it was free it would basically be consumed by bots and be useless. So back to Gopher. Which was going to license the server software (? - it's unclear, but appears to be targeting the server), and is that not the business model Netscape adopted? Which was then subsumed by Apache and IIS? So I guess I'm somewhat confused as to the actual benefit of the CERN "release" - (allowing others to create servers and clients?) - although clearly it may have been instrumental in gaining mindshare.
- tpmx 3y ago
  CERN httpd (1990) and NCSA httpd (1993) came before Netscape Netsite (dec 1994) and were both free and open source. When Netscape did launch their server it was relatively expensive starting at $1495. For $5000 you got SSL support: https://books.google.com/books?id=djgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA10 https://books.google.com/books?id=djgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA10. http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1995q1/0010.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1995q1/0010.ht... MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (December 15, 1994) -- Netscape Communications Corporation today announced the availability of the 1.0 versions of its Netscape Navigatorand Netsite server line, including the Netsite Commerce Serverwith integrated security. The availability of these open software products, announced in September, enables Netscape Communications to offer the first complete, secure client/server software system for conducting commerce and exchanging information via the Internet and private TCP/IP networks. Also: https://webdevelopmenthistory.com/1995-apache-microsoft-iis-web-server-market/ https://webdevelopmenthistory.com/1995-apache-microsoft-iis-... According to The Web Server Book, at the second International WWW Conference, held in Chicago in October 1994, a straw poll of attendees showed that “90 percent of present Webmasters used the NCSA server”
- revelio 3y ago
  Netscape's original business model was selling Navigator. That didn't work for various reasons, like IE being given away for free. So then they switched to server side products. But there wasn't enough depth there, and there were also free web servers, so they couldn't create enough value to both pay for server development and the browser, so they went under. Then MS came along. The browser was undermining their paid-for product, not generating revenue. So IE "went under" (was destaffed). Then AOL came along. For unclear reasons they bought Mozilla and paid for development for a long time, probably losing all their money. They eventually went under. Then Apple came along. They needed a browser of their own because they didn't want to depend on IE any more. But beyond being able to browse the mobile web they didn't need much more than that. Apple has not gone under, but the web is clearly just a feature of their OS and to the extent it gets developed, it's to keep up with Chrome. Then Google came along. They saw what a disaster zone the browser market was, plagued by non-existent or directly contradictory business models, and they feared Microsoft crushing them above all else, just like they'd done for Netscape. So they started paying browser makers to set them as the default, and wrote the Toolbar, and eventually graduated to making their own browser from scratch. AdWords is the closest thing the web ever had to an actual business model. It's reasonable that the people funding Gopher didn't see any commercial future in it, especially as Gopher had search integrated into the protocol. Even Google tried to sell themselves to Yahoo for $1M early on, and were rebuffed, because clearly web stuff wasn't worth that much.
zugi 3y ago
> In a time where we are having budgets slashed, it is impossible to justify continued (increasing) resources being allocated to Gopher development unless some good things result for the University of Minnesota. This is a fact of life. Wow. What happened to publicly funded universities doing work to benefit all of mankind? They already had Gopher named after their team mascot, so PR value to the University would always be there. I've seen government-funded universities trying to restrict and license their works a lot lately, and somehow assumed it was a new phenomenon. Perhaps I had an overly rosy view of academia in the past.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  State governments continually cut budget support for tertiary education in the name of fiscal responsibility, so unfortunately many no longer have the means to do so.
  - eru 3y ago
    Cutting budgets for education might even be the right thing to do. But that doesn't necessarily have much to do with research, or at least it shouldn't.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      As we saw with newsrooms, when faced with existential crises, even the most traditional firewalls will get scrapped in the race to find nickels in couch cushions.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      I don't see how this line of thinking makes sense. Where do you believe research funds come from?
      - eru 3y ago
        My comment was more normative than descriptive: I am saying that research budgets and educations budgets shouldn't be intermingled. (And more generally, that research and education institutions shouldn't be intermingled by default either.) If they were separate institutions, then cutting funding for one doesn't would not impact the other.