23 ms·

Overbite Project: Why still use Gopher? What makes Gopher relevant?

104 points by Tomte 3y ago

ecliptik 3y ago
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/ https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/ 2. https://bombadillo.colorfield.space/ https://bombadillo.colorfield.space/ 3. https://tilde.wiki/wiki/Gopher https://tilde.wiki/wiki/Gopher
- detourdog 3y ago
  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.
- mindcrime 3y ago
  I haven't tried that one but VF1 is a nice gopher client. It's what I generally use for browsing gopherspace. And I think both lynx and elinks have gopher support as well.
duodecimal 3y ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38150331 The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol (2016) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269784
- dwheeler 3y ago
  > 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.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    With a readily available (and some would argue superior) protocol just sitting right there it was the most boneheaded of decisions. It was worse than when Unisys started getting all litigious with GIF and forced the creation of PNG, in this case the obvious alternative was already in widespread use which made the switch extremely easy.
    - dwheeler 3y ago
      I agree, it was boneheaded. In: https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/ https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-goph... > “That socially killed Gopher,” [Bob] Alberti says of the licensing fiasco. I knew Bob (via Scepter of Goth) and feel sad that the University made such bad choices.
Kwpolska 3y ago
Internet Archive says this is at least from 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/20080915042719/https://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/relevance.html 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 3y ago
  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-the-Small-Internet https://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2021/245/The-Rise-of-t...
anthk 3y ago
gopher://magical.fish gopher://sdf.org gopher://hngopher.com
ghssds 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    And what happened since 2002? Irrelevance?
    - erik_seaberg 3y ago
      That's my guess.
    - ahefner 3y ago
      Gopher had been irrelevant for half a decade by 2002.
- contingencies 3y ago
  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.
lupusreal 3y ago
The article forgets the most important reason to use gopher; it filters plebs!
- bombcar 3y ago
  gopher over Tor! I wonder if gopher://....onion could be made to work ...
  - darreninthenet 3y ago
    Apparently so, check out: gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/1/ They have a Tor link on their page
dusted 3y ago
gopher://dusted.dk/0/pages/phlog/2023-10-29.txt
1970-01-01 3y ago
>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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 https://github.com/navanchauhan/swift-gopher [1] https://web.navan.dev/iGopherBrowser/ https://web.navan.dev/iGopherBrowser/
- dev2point0 3y ago
  The link to your app on your website is broken
  - navanchauhan 3y ago
    Whoops! Looks like I accidentally deleted the last character. Should be fixed now. https://apps.apple.com/in/app/igopherbrowser/id6474638845 https://apps.apple.com/in/app/igopherbrowser/id6474638845
jessamyn 3y ago
We stay on top of keeping MetaFilter's gopher server working. gopher://gopher.metafilter.com
CaptArmchair 3y ago
I dabble with Gopher for two reasons. First, it's a simple protocol. Learning about the basics of networking, building your own Gopher client, Gopher offers a great opportunity to tip your toe into the pond. Second, I have the DiggieDog browser installed on my phone. During my commute, I pass through stretches with limited connectivity. Reading some of the phlogs I follow is a great pass time. I don't think Gopher needs to be the "next big thing". It has been that a while ago. The limitations are why it got superseded by protocols that cater to the needs of the many. That said, it still has its place on the Internet as a retreat for a community that values Gophers original simplicity. And I think that's absolutely valid.
- FerretFred 3y ago
  I agree! My little ol' gopher server gets hundreds of hits a day, thankfully not from robots. It's a repository for the unusual and hard-to-find, so (real) people come looking for that. Last year I made a token attempt to modernise it, and opened up a number of categories to my web server. It's all good fun, simple to manage and by and large, used by real humans. What's not to love?
INTPenis 3y ago
Same people around me who talk about Gopher are also promoting Gemini. I admire their efforts to keep simple text based systems simple but I just don't see the point. HTTP has its flaws but at least we can all work together on it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
antifa 3y ago
Is it possible to browse a forum and post/reply to comments on gopher/gemini? I saw a debate where one party insisted it was possible and supported, but no one was willing to provide evidence like documentation or code samples.

104 points by Tomte 3y ago

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/ https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/ 2. https://bombadillo.colorfield.space/ https://bombadillo.colorfield.space/ 3. https://tilde.wiki/wiki/Gopher https://tilde.wiki/wiki/Gopher

detourdog 3y ago
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.
mindcrime 3y ago
I haven't tried that one but VF1 is a nice gopher client. It's what I generally use for browsing gopherspace. And I think both lynx and elinks have gopher support as well.

duodecimal 3y ago

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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38150331 The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol (2016) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269784

dwheeler 3y ago
> 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.
- jandrese 3y ago
  With a readily available (and some would argue superior) protocol just sitting right there it was the most boneheaded of decisions. It was worse than when Unisys started getting all litigious with GIF and forced the creation of PNG, in this case the obvious alternative was already in widespread use which made the switch extremely easy.
  - dwheeler 3y ago
    I agree, it was boneheaded. In: https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/ https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-goph... > “That socially killed Gopher,” [Bob] Alberti says of the licensing fiasco. I knew Bob (via Scepter of Goth) and feel sad that the University made such bad choices.

Kwpolska 3y ago

Internet Archive says this is at least from 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/20080915042719/https://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/relevance.html 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 3y ago
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-the-Small-Internet https://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2021/245/The-Rise-of-t...

anthk 3y ago

gopher://magical.fish gopher://sdf.org gopher://hngopher.com

ghssds 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  And what happened since 2002? Irrelevance?
  - erik_seaberg 3y ago
    That's my guess.
  - ahefner 3y ago
    Gopher had been irrelevant for half a decade by 2002.
contingencies 3y ago
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.

lupusreal 3y ago

The article forgets the most important reason to use gopher; it filters plebs!

bombcar 3y ago
gopher over Tor! I wonder if gopher://....onion could be made to work ...
- darreninthenet 3y ago
  Apparently so, check out: gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/1/ They have a Tor link on their page

dusted 3y ago

gopher://dusted.dk/0/pages/phlog/2023-10-29.txt

1970-01-01 3y ago

>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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 https://github.com/navanchauhan/swift-gopher [1] https://web.navan.dev/iGopherBrowser/ https://web.navan.dev/iGopherBrowser/

dev2point0 3y ago
The link to your app on your website is broken
- navanchauhan 3y ago
  Whoops! Looks like I accidentally deleted the last character. Should be fixed now. https://apps.apple.com/in/app/igopherbrowser/id6474638845 https://apps.apple.com/in/app/igopherbrowser/id6474638845

jessamyn 3y ago

We stay on top of keeping MetaFilter's gopher server working. gopher://gopher.metafilter.com

CaptArmchair 3y ago

I dabble with Gopher for two reasons. First, it's a simple protocol. Learning about the basics of networking, building your own Gopher client, Gopher offers a great opportunity to tip your toe into the pond. Second, I have the DiggieDog browser installed on my phone. During my commute, I pass through stretches with limited connectivity. Reading some of the phlogs I follow is a great pass time. I don't think Gopher needs to be the "next big thing". It has been that a while ago. The limitations are why it got superseded by protocols that cater to the needs of the many. That said, it still has its place on the Internet as a retreat for a community that values Gophers original simplicity. And I think that's absolutely valid.

FerretFred 3y ago
I agree! My little ol' gopher server gets hundreds of hits a day, thankfully not from robots. It's a repository for the unusual and hard-to-find, so (real) people come looking for that. Last year I made a token attempt to modernise it, and opened up a number of categories to my web server. It's all good fun, simple to manage and by and large, used by real humans. What's not to love?

INTPenis 3y ago

Same people around me who talk about Gopher are also promoting Gemini. I admire their efforts to keep simple text based systems simple but I just don't see the point. HTTP has its flaws but at least we can all work together on it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

antifa 3y ago

Is it possible to browse a forum and post/reply to comments on gopher/gemini? I saw a debate where one party insisted it was possible and supported, but no one was willing to provide evidence like documentation or code samples.