article in september 20th issue of INFOWORLD
Mark P. McCahill
I just read your article in the september 20th issue of InfoWorld called
"Use the right tools to easily surf the Internet". The article was pretty
good but the last pargraph about gopher says:
The software for creating a Gopher server is freely available
on the internet, although you'll have to pay a license fee to
the University of Minnesota if you build your own Gopher.
and this isn't quite right. It would be more accurate to say something like:
Several implementations of the software for creating a gopher server
are freely available on the Internet, although commercial sites need to
arrange licensing with the University of Minnesota to use the U of M's
server software.
I suspect that your article got editied down for space, but it would have been
better if it was more clear that there are other servers available which were
not developed by the University of Minnesota and each developer decides what
policy to use for distributing their software. I'm concerned that some people
might get the wrong impression from the article. It is not our intent to charge
commercial sites a license fee for running software developed by someone else.
Of course, I would also argue that the servers developed here are the best :-)
and are what people really should run :-), but your article can leave the
reader with the wrong impression.
Maybe someday you will write a comparison of the various Gopher server
implementations and can compare features, support, and price :-) :-) :-).
Mark P. McCahill
Gopherspace Engineer
University of Minnesota Computer & Information Services
room 125 Shepherd Labs m...@boombox.micro.umn.edu
100 Union Street SE 612 625 1300 (voice)
Mpls., MN 55455 612 625 6817 (fax)