Gopher has been called »legacy« or »was used before the web«. There are
good reasons to use and work on the development of gopher.
## A different view on the Web
With only the the web available the views on what can be there or could
be done is too small‐minded. The Internet is not the web, it can be dif‐
ferent. The Internet can be different too, but has not yet evolved in
the complexity of the web.
## Simplicity in Mind
Gopher menus do not allow you the freedom of HTML and all its technolo‐
gies. This forces developers to narrow down the problem they try to
solve. Instead of raping web technologies to fit to the problem, the
problem is rethought to fit to gopher.
## Metadata under Control
The development of mass surveillance, big databases and core router con‐
trol of intelligence agencies has taught us to not expose unneeded meta‐
data. Gopher does only expose the needed metadata. If gopher is run over
tor you are as safe as the peer you are connecting to in a hidden ser‐
vice. There is no header data with user‐agent variabilities or
javascript DOM hidden fields that can be used to create permanent cook‐
ies to expose your personal life.
## Resources are Rare
Webbrowsers now use OpenGL, your USB devices, run nearly byte code in
javascript, burn your CPU and battery life for no new information. Text
files are read on youtube videos. For this information transfer a well
written text is easier to edit and be reused by users, who should be
producers. The Internet is for producing, not consuming. We should not
waste resources on videos, we should write nice texts with some ASCII
layout.
## Simple Content Production
As said before, the Internet should be for producing content, not for
consuming it. Users of the web are forced to be customers and only al‐
lowed to produce content which can be bound into advertisement. With go‐
pher you can setup a server in no time and simply write a text file you
offer to the world.
## For Fun
Customers who only take away from the world without giving will not use
gopher for a long time. This filters its userbase to interested people.
Those people are mostly caring and nice. Come on #bitreich‐en for more!
