Re: Gemini thoughts (was Re: Gopher Desktop Client)

[Sean Conner <sean@conman.org>]

It was thus said that the Great Cameron Kaiser once stated:
> > I like and very much respect Gopher (and I wrote a client for gopher), 
> > but I like Gemini too, for the use cases above. If you are into retro 
> > computing, I think gopher is probably best for now, although there is 
> > some discussion of a variant of gemini without TLS called mercury that 
> > is being explored.
> 
> Interesting. Anywhere to look?

  Not really.  There was a post by Solderpunk (creator of Gemini) about
Mercury, which at the time was a thought experiement:

https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users/solderpunk/gemlog/the-mercury-protocol.gmi

(link to the Gemini post via a web based proxy)

  It was only later when a now-heavily moderated member of the Gemini mail
list took it seriously (possibly [1]) and started pushing for it:

	https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/
	https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/2021/005852.html

  And for those interested in pushing TLS for gopher, please peruse the
Gemini mailing list archives---there were several calls to remove or replace
TLS, so be very careful what you wish for---you may just get it.  In the
end.  Deeply.  And hard.

  -spc (And this even *after* the years long ENCRYPT ALL THE THINGS!
	campaign on the web ... )

[1]	He was very close to being banned for his possibly trollish behavior
	on the list, but heavy moderation of his posts were done instead. 
	It's open to interpretation if he was deliberately trolling or just
	annoying.  His mails did cause several members to unsubscribe from
	the list.