A positive surprise that Gopher is still working

Szczezuja.space

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May 8, 2022, 5:53:47 AM5/8/22

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Interesting link from one blog that I have in my reader. The author
notes that one company is posting a link to Gopher in its Twitter post.
The co-founder of the retro hand-held company uses Gopher to communicate
information about his new product. So '90s Gopher can be used for modern
marketing. ;-)

https://daverupert.com/2022/05/notes-from-a-gopher-site/

gopher://stevenf.com:70/0/journal/2022/04/18/first-playdates-shipping.txt

gopher://stevenf.com:70/0/journal/2022/04/22/panic-is-25.txt

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.-=-. Szczezuja; on the small-net:
( S\ \ gemini://szczezuja.space/ - gemlog & tinylog
`--' / gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/szczezuja/ - phlog

lunchboxhero

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May 8, 2022, 9:24:05 AM5/8/22

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Szczezuja.space <szcz...@sdf.org> wrote:
> Interesting link from one blog that I have in my reader. The author
> notes that one company is posting a link to Gopher in its Twitter post.
> The co-founder of the retro hand-held company uses Gopher to communicate
> information about his new product. So '90s Gopher can be used for modern
> marketing. ;-)
>
> https://daverupert.com/2022/05/notes-from-a-gopher-site/
>
> gopher://stevenf.com:70/0/journal/2022/04/18/first-playdates-shipping.txt
>
> gopher://stevenf.com:70/0/journal/2022/04/22/panic-is-25.txt
>

Thanks for sharing, I thought this was very cool to see. I am a relatively
new user to all things “smol” being born shortly after gopher was released.
Your links brought a few questions to mind regarding the use of gopher
(and Usenet, Gemini for that matter) for commercial interests. I liked
seeing Steven Frank promote what is obviously a labor of love on his
journal, but would it also be acceptable for his company to have a presence
on gopher? Say a stripped down version of their http site? From what I’ve
read it seems that gopher is anti-commercial, but I’m trying to better
understand where the community lands on this.

--
Gemini://sdf.org/lunchboxhero/

Szczezuja.space

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May 8, 2022, 3:45:39 PM5/8/22

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On 2022-05-08, lunchboxhero <lunchb...@sdf.org> wrote:
> From what I’ve
> read it seems that gopher is anti-commercial, but I’m trying to better
> understand where the community lands on this.

Yes, I was thinking the same. Small-net is usually considered not to be
business-friendly; because there is not much of what you can earn
(advertising, tracking, etc.). And this is such an interesting novelty.
To reach a group playing retro with a retro product. And yet today such
a retro industry is so profitable branch.

John Goerzen

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Jun 14, 2022, 11:41:36 PM6/14/22

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On 2022-05-08, lunchboxhero <lunchb...@sdf.org> wrote:

> Thanks for sharing, I thought this was very cool to see. I am a relatively
> new user to all things “smol” being born shortly after gopher was released.
> Your links brought a few questions to mind regarding the use of gopher
> (and Usenet, Gemini for that matter) for commercial interests. I liked
> seeing Steven Frank promote what is obviously a labor of love on his
> journal, but would it also be acceptable for his company to have a presence
> on gopher? Say a stripped down version of their http site? From what I’ve
> read it seems that gopher is anti-commercial, but I’m trying to better
> understand where the community lands on this.

Gopher wasn't anti-commercial, and in fact UMN tried to monetize (sell) it, if I
remember correctly.

You might read up a bit on the history of NSFNet. The details are a bit foggy
to me, but basically the Internet itself was anti-commercial until, I think, the
early 90s.

There were Gopher sites for corporations. I remember one or two that were
relating to news (TV news particularly).

I salvaged what I could in 2007. By then, many sites were offline, but you can
find some commercial sites in my archive:

https://archive.org/details/2007-gopher-mirror

It was effectively possible to download the entirety of Gopherspace in 2007.

However, I think it would probably be accurate to say that commercial sites were
much less common on Gopherspace than they would shortly be on the web.

Others may have better memories of this era.

- John

Szczezuja.space

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Jun 16, 2022, 4:52:20 AM6/16/22

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On 2022-06-15, John Goerzen <jgoe...@complete.org> wrote:
> On 2022-05-08, lunchboxhero <lunchb...@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> I salvaged what I could in 2007. By then, many sites were offline,
> but you can find some commercial sites in my archive:
> https://archive.org/details/2007-gopher-mirror
> It was effectively possible to download the entirety of Gopherspace in
> 2007.

It's also on Gopher, at:
gopher://mozz.us:70/1/wayback