Gopher: Underground Technology

  By Lore Sjoberg

  Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,62988,00.html

  02:00 AM Apr. 12, 2004 PT

  Back  in  1992, when "yahoo" was something cowboys yelled and "ebay" was just pig
  Latin,  the University of Minnesota developed a new way of looking at data on the
  Internet.   Their  protocol,  called  "gopher"  after  the  UMN  mascot,  allowed
  archivists  to  present  the  mishmash  of  information in a standard format, and
  enabled readers to navigate documents on a world of servers using a simple visual
  interface.

  For  a  while,  it  seemed  as  if  gopher  might  open  the  Internet  up to the
  nontechnical  masses and usher in a new era of online communication. It very well
  might have, if the Web hadn't come along and done it instead.

  Mention  gopher to a newcomer to the Web and you might get a blank stare. Mention
  it to an old-timer and you're likely to see a nostalgic smile. But to a community
  of  developers  and  enthusiasts,  gopher  is alive and kicking. And if they have
  their way, it will have a healthy future.

  According to a list on Floodgap.com, over 250 active gopher servers are currently
  online,  serving  documents  ranging  from  lawyer  jokes  to  the  text  of  the
  Shays-Meehan  campaign  finance  reform  bill.  Almost  half  these  servers  are
  affiliated  with American colleges and universities, but servers are also located
  on every continent but Africa and Antarctica.

  One  such repository is Quux.org and is maintained by John Goerzen, a 24-year-old
  Kansas  systems  administrator and programmer. In addition to managing what is to
  his knowledge the largest actively maintained gopher server in existence, Goerzen
  is  the  developer of a gopher server called PyGopherd, and the maintainer of the
  original gopher code from the University of Minnesota.

  Goerzen's  work  on  gopher is strictly volunteer, and his main motivation is his
  own enjoyment.

  "Put  most  simply,  gopher is fun," he explains. "Any programmer with experience
  with  network  programming can write a pretty much full-featured gopher server or
  client in a couple of hours."

  Another  of  his motivations is preserving the history of the Internet. "A lot of
  gopher  sites  are disappearing -- running on servers that have been forgotten by
  now  --  and I wanted to be able to prevent the content on them from disappearing
  forever," he said. "I started Quux.org, my gopher site, with that in mind."

  Goerzen  is  not  just  an  archivist,  though.  He  sees  a future for gopher in
  applications such as data exchange.

  "I'm interested in using gopher as a protocol for dynamic information exchange in
  a way similar to XML-RPC and SOAP," he says.

  He  also  sees  gopher  as  an  excellent  alternative  to PDA and smartphone Web
  browsers.

  "Consider  this example: Port-a-Goph, a gopher client in development for Palm OS.
  Cameron Kaiser wrote this in his spare time and got it working quickly on his own
  Palm,"  he  said.  "Contrast  that  with  the  state  of Web browsing on handheld
  devices:  Despite  many  years  to  improve  them,  I  still regularly run across
  websites  that  simply  do  not  render at all, or render so poorly that they are
  unusable."

  Whatever  its  future,  development for gopher continues. Late last month saw the
  release  of  a  gopher  module  for  Apache, allowing the popular open-source Web
  server to serve up gopher pages as well as Web pages.

  Despite  its relative obscurity, gopherspace is accessible to many more Web users
  than  people  realize.  Gopher  support  is  built  into  Mozilla-based  browsers
  including  Firefox, most versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer up to version
  5,  although  the  degree  of  support  varies. People who want to stick with the
  familiarity  of  http  can  use  the  public  gopher proxy at Floodgap.com, which
  translates gopher pages into HTML.

  Visitors  to  gopherspace  will  find  a piece of the Internet's history, some of
  which,  Goerzen  says,  isn't  available  anywhere  else. They will also find The
  Gopher Manifesto, a document praising gopher's simplicity and elegance.

  The  Gopher  Manifesto describes gopher as "a hypertext Eden" that existed before
  the  clutter  and commercialization of the Web. "Is it time for a new Renaissance
  on the Internet, to bring back the promise of the early years?" it asks.

  Goerzen's  take  on  that  question  is  subdued, but optimistic. "I don't expect
  gopher to ever overtake the Web," he says. "I do expect it to continue to exist."

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