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

[kaltheat at googlemail.com]

Hi,

On Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 09:32:03AM +1000, James Mills wrote:
> [...]
> Being quite new to Gopher myself (old things new again?)
> I also don't' really understand the discussion so far
> or what the proposal is.

It hopefully gets clearer and clearer ;)

> I also happen to agree with some other comments
> wherein centralization has never really proven to be
> a good thing. The Internet at large was designed to
> be a decentralized homogenous network of interconnected
> networks and computers. "Central Authority" has no place
> on or in the Internet (but recent times are forcing this to
> change and I believe it's a **BAD** thing).
> 
> If Gopher is to survive as a protocol and medium IHMO
> it **MUST** remain simple; decentralized and open.

Please take a look at my reply to Mateusz where I tried to explain why
a "central" project would not impair the decentralization at all ...

Maybe it gets clearer when you don't think to strictly about "central
authority" but of "coordination of forces" ...

> > [...]
> > It seems more like you're actually proposing a central resource or
> > repository
> > for this data, which doesn't really need anyone's permission ...
> >
> 
> Indeed. If your ultimate goal is to help new users
> being more content to Gopherspace then this is
> fairly easily achieved IHMO without anything special.
> 
> You need: a "presence", "good content" and "a user base".

As I said multiple times before: guiding new users might be one task
among others a project could work on. And if a project is community-
driven and accepted by the community it automatically has all those
things you propose: "presence", "good content" and "a user base" ...

Maybe my ultimate goal is to revive(?) "the gopher project" as a real
project. And I tried to explain several times what this could mean to
me. If you are interrested in a "gopher project", you are welcome
(several times) to express your wishes/ideas for a "gopher project"
... to fill this term with meaning/sense.

Regards,
kaltheat