Gemini - A new, collaboratively designed internet protocol | Hacker News
Please send corrections or suggestions for additional questions to solderpunk@posteo.net
Gemini is a new application-level internet protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, with some special consideration for serving a lightweight hypertext format which facilitates linking between files. You may think of Gemini as "the web, stripped right back to its essence" or as "Gopher, souped up and modernised a little", depending upon your perspective. Gemini may be of interest to people who are:
Gemini is intended to be simple, but not necessarily as simple as possible. Instead, the design strives to maximise its "power to weight ratio", while keeping its weight within acceptable limits. Gemini is also intended to be very privacy conscious, to be difficult to extend in the future (so that it will stay simple and privacy conscious), and to be compatible with a "do it yourself" computing ethos. For this last reason, Gemini is technically very familiar and conservative: it's a protocol in the traditional client-server request-response paradigm, and is built on mature, standardised technology like URIs, MIME media types, and TLS.
Project Gemini was started by Solderpunk solderpunk@posteo.net, who remains Benevolent Dictator For Now. However, the protocol has been designed in collaboration with a loose and informal community of interested parties via emails, phlog and Fediverse posts. Many people have shaped significant parts of the protocol, so Gemini should not be thought of as the work of one person.
The official home of Project Gemini is the gemini.circumlunar.space server. It serves the latest version of this FAQ document, as well the protocol specification and recommended best practices via Gemini, Gopher and HTTPS, on IPv4 and IPv6.
Official discussion regarding Gemini happens on a mailing list. You can subscribe to the list and view archives at https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/listinfo/gemini. Archives can also be viewed over Gemini at gemini://rawtext.club:1965/~sloum/geminilist/.
Anybody who is running a Gemini server or implementing a Gemini client or server software is strongly encouraged to subscribe to the list.
Casual discussion regarding Gemini also happens in the #gemini channel on the tilde.chat IRC server. IRC logs can be viewed over Gemini at gemini://makeworld.gq/cgi-bin/gemini-irc.
Not for a minute! Nor does anybody involved with Gemini want to destroy Gopherspace. Gemini is not intended to replace either Gopher or the web, but to co-exist peacefully alongside them as one more option which people can freely choose to use if it suits them. In the same way that many people currently serve the same content via gopher and the web, people will be able to "bihost" or "trihost" content on whichever combination of protocols they think offer the best match to their technical, philosophical and aesthetic requirements and those of their intended audience.