Subject: Re: [apps-discuss] Gopher updated spec

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 16:08:18 -0500

--On Wednesday, 31 December, 2014 20:44 -0500 Nick Matavka
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I made a few rather substantial edits to that gopher spec, for
> the dinosaurs that still care.  It is available on
> piratepad.net/gopher
> 
> If there are any conflicts or fixes, please do not hesitate to
> inform me because I would like to fast track this through the
> indie submissions stream.

Speaking as a dinosaur who hasn't determined if he should care
or not, 

(1) I will not read this spec or attempt to comment in any
substantive way until there is a posted I-D in the archives.
References to private copies of documents don't count.

(2) I don't know what opinions you might be able to get
informally, but the Independent Submission Editor is not allowed
to consider a document unless it has been posted as an I-D.  If
there is such a thing as an "indie submissions stream fast
track, I'm not aware of it and I've served in one advisory
function or another to the function that is now the ISE for
significantly more than 20 years.  You might also want to have a
discussion with the Chairs of this WG and/or the Apps ADs as to
whether this WG is an appropriate forum for something you intend
to send to the ISE (I don't have an opinion on that, but the
question should be asked).

(3) I hope that, when there is a document, the motivation for
publishing it is extremely clear.  Unless you can point to
Gopher implementations in active use or plans to deploy new
ones, that may be difficult.  I would personally welcome such
developments --I think we lost some functionality when the
HTTP/HTTPS web swept away both Gopher and WAIS -- but that
belief has shown no signs of getting traction in the community.

It the goal is just to publish a complete description of a
long-unused protocol, I suggest that IEEE Internet, ACM
Communications, or something similar might be much better
publication venues than the RFC Series, but I'm not the ISE and
would not presume to speak for him.

regards,
   john

---

From: Lyndon Nerenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2015 13:48:03 -0800 (PST)

> belief has shown no signs of getting traction in the community.

Gopher played an important, if brief, role in the evolution of the 
Internet, and it should be documented for that reason alone.  There is 
also some educational value to it (as you hint at above), by showing that 
simple protocols can support powerful applications.  Certainly this is 
worthy of an Informational RFC.

--lyndon

---

From: Claudio Allocchio <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2015 23:03:07 +0100 (CET)

Also speaking as a survived dinosaur, I was indeed expecting an official 
I-D submission after Nick first message, and not yet another private 
posted document. I-D can have many versions, thus it makes no sense not to 
use them in the formal way.

If the goal is to document a "still existing practice" with undocumented 
extensions, we also have the "Informational" series, which is NOT a 
standard at all, but helps for suc documentation purpouses.

So, Nick... let us know how you intend to proceed... I of course fully 
second John's message below.

  On Thu, 1 Jan 2015, John C Klensin wrote:

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> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/apps-discuss
>

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---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 14:03:32 -0800

On 1/1/2015 1:48 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
> also some educational value to it (as you hint at above), by showing
> that simple protocols can support powerful applications.  Certainly this
> is worthy of an Informational RFC.

+1.

In fact, gopher was the first wide-spread, user-friendly publishing
mechanism, after the long-standing and un-friendly anonymous FTP.

It preceded web use significantly and for a time, there was real
competition between gopher and web.

At the time, only html documents could be published for the web, while
gopher was text based.  So it was easier to publish through gopher,
albeit documents weren't as pretty.

My own realization of what the net would become was in 1990 -- the web
had essentially no deployment yet -- when demonstrating gopher to a
class of AT&T folk and we landed on a page in Wellington NZ showing
their town council minutes for the week before.

d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 17:16:36 -0500

--On Thursday, 01 January, 2015 13:48 -0800 Lyndon Nerenberg
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Gopher played an important, if brief, role in the evolution of
> the Internet, and it should be documented for that reason
> alone.  There is also some educational value to it (as you
> hint at above), by showing that simple protocols can support
> powerful applications.  Certainly this is worthy of an
> Informational RFC.

It is precisely because of that historical record that I'd
prefer to see a careful description of the protocol --as it
existed and was used --published for a broader audience than the
usual browsers of the RFC series.  On the other hand, if the
intent is to describe new implementations or ways that Gopher
could be made better, the IETF audience is probably the right
one.  But, again, if an independent submission is planned, this
would be up to the ISE... after an I-D is posted.

   john

---

From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2015 00:12:30 +0000

I've written about updates to widely deployed schemes; I don't think
'gopher:' qualifies as 'widely-deployed', but most of what I said applies.

If the goal is to provide some historical background, there are better
places to do so than an Internet Draft / RFC, e.g., 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29

> albeit documents weren't as pretty.

gopher had non-text documents (using a 1 byte type code, sese
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1436 section 3.8),
while gopher+ used MIME, as discussed in 1993 GopherCon.
http://prentissriddle.com/trips/gophercon1993.html

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net