[gopher] History and future of "the gopher project"

[kaltheat at googlemail.com]

Hi,

On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 09:25:34AM -0800, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
> Although I respect (and in some ways wouldn't mind) a central planning
> process for Gopher, I think that makes what is for many of us a fun sideline
> unnecessarily bureaucratic.

This is a good point: bureaucracy shouldn't evolve!
But what could be bureaucratic? People could work/play on as they used to do.

> Many sites here do have at least some of what
> you propose already as resources for new users, although candidly much of
> the denizens of gopherspace were already using it or rediscovered it rather
> than new people who had never experienced it before.

I didn't know the latter. But this must/will change: The more years pass by
the more the number of people who were able to use gopher in its heyday will
decrease (I don't want it that way!).

> I certainly don't mind someone (you?) constructing a resource with your
> proposed services of sufficient quality; I just don't want it to be
> constraining.

What could be constraining and for whom?
For example: If there was a guide on how to setup Bucktooth which(the guide)
has been developed and was maintained by "the gopher project" anyone could
write h[is|er] own guide or propose changes or whatever. In which way could
this be constaining?

> People ask me personally about "changes I would authorize
> to gopherspace" presumably because Floodgap is a server of long standing,
> but I don't want to be the benevolent dictator of Gopher by default, and
> in that vein I would only endorse something voluntary that recognizes the
> community will maintain itself best through an organic process.

I agree with these abstract thoughts. But what could "something voluntary
that recognizes the community will maintain itself best through an organic
process" mean more precisely?

(And of course you ever will be one of the wise lords of gopherspace ;) )

Regards,
kaltheat