I still think Gopher (the protocol that is) is still very relevant today. The beauty of it really is in its simplicity. Great to see that the library I wrote all those years ago is still being used :D
I love the idea of Gopher (even more so of Gemini), but the basic hurdle I run into is content. It feels like half of it is talking about how great gopher/gemini is, and the other half are deeply personal blogs. While the technology reflects the early days of the Internet, the content reflects the early days of blogging and social media (which came later). Rather than talking about things they are passionate about, they are talking about themselves.
I've become stuck in a strange metaphor regarding this: Gopher, Gemini etc are like an indicator of "biodiversity". Like a species living happily inside a small, even tiny ecological niche, having discovered that they don't really need much more.
Small protocols don't (?) disturb the mainstream internet in any meaningful way, but they simply deserve an opportunity to "be". They'll never be "big" these days (or, maybe in the scifi-scenario of complete societal collapse?). The content might, indeed, be a from-geek-to-geek thing these days, but they're a lovely sign of cultural richness, different thinking patterns etc.
I feel the same about Gander (the Canadian Bluesky-compatible startup). The only content on it is people talking about how it's not Twitter. One of my top three beefs with it.
I think these projects focus way too much on platform building than content acquisition. The valuable platform is the one where the content is, whether that's celebrity feeds or professional networking. It doesn't matter how technically good your platform is if there's no casual reason to visit.
The early years of BlueSky were people talking about how it’s not Twitter.
People stick to a social network, and when they move is because they have big complaints about their previous home. If they didn’t, they would never have moved at all.
That’s probably the biggest lesson of the Web 2.0 era that everybody that tried to create a new social network had to learn.
The content split is what keeps me from staying. Once you leave the two or three hosts everyone names, it is hard to tell a technical phlog from another post about the protocol itself. Do you keep a short list of non-meta phlogs, or is it mostly hopping between known hosts?
Few months ago I had Claude build me a Gopher browser for Classic Macintosh systems, geomys[1]. I was using TurboGopher[2] before then, and it worked, but had a lot of design choices that are clunky today.
I tried to focus on keeping with the Apple HIG from the 1990s, while also making it more aligned with modern browser principles.
Proud exSDF member from the old days.
SDF was considered 'vintage' back when i joined so must be doubly so now.
Was introduced to Gopher back then too, along with NetBSD.
What a blast from the past to see SDF.org make it to HN in 2026.
Proud grandpa. lol.
Gemini it's good on legacy machines and some clients can be really barebones (awk+less), and for some security there are clients written in Go. For awk+less,
do yourself a favour. Run
unset LESSOPEN
or have it at ~/.profile.
Reticulum it's unusable in 32 bit machines, it badly needs a Go port for nomadnet.
On Gopher, well, lynx/sacc and maybe i2pd for some security and anonimity.
As a start, there's:
gopher://magical.fish
gopher://sdf.org
For gemini,
gemini://gemi.dev it's nice.
'Lagrange' covers both gemini and gopher as a client.
You can set an HTTPS proxy for it and read news sites and blogs over Gemini.
Just set
stargate.gemi.dev:1994
As the HTTP proxy in the settings for Lagrange.
For the terminal guys, there's Telescope and it can use HTTP proxies as well. Read the man page.
20 comments:
I still think Gopher (the protocol that is) is still very relevant today. The beauty of it really is in its simplicity. Great to see that the library I wrote all those years ago is still being used :D
https://pkg.go.dev/git.mills.io/prologic/go-gopher
I love the idea of Gopher (even more so of Gemini), but the basic hurdle I run into is content. It feels like half of it is talking about how great gopher/gemini is, and the other half are deeply personal blogs. While the technology reflects the early days of the Internet, the content reflects the early days of blogging and social media (which came later). Rather than talking about things they are passionate about, they are talking about themselves.
I've become stuck in a strange metaphor regarding this: Gopher, Gemini etc are like an indicator of "biodiversity". Like a species living happily inside a small, even tiny ecological niche, having discovered that they don't really need much more.
Small protocols don't (?) disturb the mainstream internet in any meaningful way, but they simply deserve an opportunity to "be". They'll never be "big" these days (or, maybe in the scifi-scenario of complete societal collapse?). The content might, indeed, be a from-geek-to-geek thing these days, but they're a lovely sign of cultural richness, different thinking patterns etc.
I feel the same about Gander (the Canadian Bluesky-compatible startup). The only content on it is people talking about how it's not Twitter. One of my top three beefs with it.
I think these projects focus way too much on platform building than content acquisition. The valuable platform is the one where the content is, whether that's celebrity feeds or professional networking. It doesn't matter how technically good your platform is if there's no casual reason to visit.
The early years of BlueSky were people talking about how it’s not Twitter.
People stick to a social network, and when they move is because they have big complaints about their previous home. If they didn’t, they would never have moved at all.
That’s probably the biggest lesson of the Web 2.0 era that everybody that tried to create a new social network had to learn.
Maybe they are passionate about themselves??
gopher://sdf.org and gopher://magical.fish have far more than retro-onanism.
The content split is what keeps me from staying. Once you leave the two or three hosts everyone names, it is hard to tell a technical phlog from another post about the protocol itself. Do you keep a short list of non-meta phlogs, or is it mostly hopping between known hosts?
Few months ago I had Claude build me a Gopher browser for Classic Macintosh systems, geomys[1]. I was using TurboGopher[2] before then, and it worked, but had a lot of design choices that are clunky today.
I tried to focus on keeping with the Apple HIG from the 1990s, while also making it more aligned with modern browser principles.
1. https://github.com/ecliptik/geomys
2. https://www.macintoshrepository.org/265-turbogopher
Proud exSDF member from the old days. SDF was considered 'vintage' back when i joined so must be doubly so now. Was introduced to Gopher back then too, along with NetBSD.
What a blast from the past to see SDF.org make it to HN in 2026. Proud grandpa. lol.
Why exSDF member? Your account is surely still there waiting for you!
SDF is wonderful. Been supporting them for around 20 years.
- https://geminiprotocol.net
- https://reticulum.network
Time to stop posting about these, there’s no rush for them to have their Eternal September moment. Let us enjoy the good vibes for a while longer.
Gemini it's good on legacy machines and some clients can be really barebones (awk+less), and for some security there are clients written in Go. For awk+less, do yourself a favour. Run
or have it at ~/.profile.Reticulum it's unusable in 32 bit machines, it badly needs a Go port for nomadnet.
On Gopher, well, lynx/sacc and maybe i2pd for some security and anonimity.
As a start, there's:
For gemini, 'Lagrange' covers both gemini and gopher as a client.You can set an HTTPS proxy for it and read news sites and blogs over Gemini.
Just set
As the HTTP proxy in the settings for Lagrange.For the terminal guys, there's Telescope and it can use HTTP proxies as well. Read the man page.
I run gemi.dev, so it was nice to see it here.
I recently built a Gemini client for people who like GUI's more than TUI's, and want a native macOS app
https://github.com/acidus99/MajorTom
Why ? It is not owned and controlled by billionaires. Plus no AI slop being spammed to gopher sites.
FWIW, the same applies to gemini protocol.
Same applies to HTTP too though
This is a useful angle on Go. I'd want to see how it holds outside the initial conditions.