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An alternative decentralized internet for sharing text and media: The Gemini Protocol (geminiprotocol.net)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
39 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/24735701

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)

It is similar to the old gopher: text files, links, and images form a hypertext optimized for reading. Text is formatted like Markdown - but even simpler.

Clients display text, like an eBook, or images / media.

Servers can run on a PC or Raspberry Pi which needs half a Watt of power. No FAANG companies needed. No expert knowledge needed - not more difficult than running a file sharing client.

I think it is the right thing for defense of democracy and sharing your voice in the digital realm.

all 39 comments

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[–] 28 points 8 months ago

It's a wonderful protocol, but I've noticed way too many gems getting put up and then never being maintained, not just by way of content, but also certificate management isn't managed so the server is still existing there, but the content is inaccessible.

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    [–] 18 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Is this just yet another gopher protocol? Or does it come with anything interesting

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  • [–] 25 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Gopher with certificates.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    Wait, gopher didn't use certificates? What's wrong with these people? And of course these are going to be just gpg certificates, not authoritative I imagine, or it would defeat the entire decentralised thing.

    I really don't get this stuff. If you want pure text websites, just make them, you are allowed to use pure html, you don't have to use JavaScript if you don't want to. You can get real certificates for free from Let's Encrypt, and you can use any free DNS service you want

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  • [–] 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    gopher predates http, of course it didn't have certificates.

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    First of all, they were developed around the same time; second, no one said that a protocol should remain unchanged for 35 years. And lastly, the people in "what's wrong with these people" are the people pretending gopher is any good today, and a reasonable alternative to the web, which factually isn't the case as apparently it did remain unchanged for 35 years. And if it didn't remain unchanged but did not add certificates, it would just make things look even worse.

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago

    it's been unchanged because http got more popular.

    there is a vocal part of the indieweb that does not want encrypted communication because it increases the system requirements, and because it disincentivises sending sending any sensitive information. i don't really agree with that assessment but i do think there is something to not sending stuff you don't need.

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    • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Clients display text, like an eBook, or images / media.

    Is this new? Last I checked on Gemini, it could only to text, unless you count ASCII art as images.

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 8 months ago

    It can transmit any media or mime type. It just does this one document at a time.

    Clients can display linked images inline of course.

    The purpose of this and other limitations is to make it useless for advertising and tracking.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    some clients had the ability to parse image links If included in the gemtext, but that was client specific.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    That's not ideal. I hope they implemented images in the protocol itself, because having just text is kinda bland.

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    • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (17 children)

    What's wrong with http?

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  • [–] 18 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    There's varying takes on why folks prefer Gemini:

    • HTML browsers are too complex. It is virtually impossible to implement a new one. We've got 2½ implementations, i.e. Blink/WebKit and Gecko, and that's it. Yes, you can use Dillo or w3m, links and lynx to view simplistic webpages, but anyone, who actually wants to use the web with these, will quickly run into webpages they cannot view.
      With Gemini, you can use tons of clients, some of them even written in Bash, because it's so simple, and you will not run into pages you cannot view.
    • Burn the web. Some folks hold the opinion that the modern web is beyond saving, because advertisers control many central parts of it. Presumably, these days folks are also glad to be spared from AI-generated garbage. And again, you can create your own webpage that's all smallweb with pure HTML and whatnot, but anyone who actually wants to browse these pages has an easier time finding them on Gemini.
    • An own community. Of course, using a different communication protocol cuts off communication with most of humanity. But as a result, many folks on Gemini know each other and bother reading blogs that they might not have read on the HTTP side of things.
      Well, and through survivorship bias, folks on Gemini tend to be nerds who care about permacomputing and the like, so that also helps with finding folks that have similar interests, even if you might end up reading their gardening blog, due to the aforementioned point.
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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    with gemini, you will quickly run into webpages you can't view as well (ie. all of them)

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Alright yeah, I half-expected as much when I wrote that sentence. Surely someone will post about a webpage they found, or will source something from e.g. Wikipedia. But well, hopefully it still happens less often, or at least there's less of an expectation that you look at linked webpages. 🫠

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (11 children)

    I think the better comparison (whether that's technically accurate or not) is to HTML + CSS + JS. Which is overly complicated for just small blogs and personal webpages etc. I think that's the "issue" Gemini is trying to solve.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    Still not an issue. Just throw out all modern web frameworks and stick to content-focused HTML. You can even do plaintext with unclickable links.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (7 children)

    Have you ever seen HTML without CSS? It's ugly as hell

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (4 children)
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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago*

    I have 2 webpages like this. Calling them webpages is a bit of stretch to be honest. One is a joke and the other is extremely single idea only. I was just experimenting with some stuff, that's all. But they are up and they don't need CSS. :-)

    Edit: BTW forgot to mention, you can output text only without HTML. In that case (like in the Random of the Week) you can use it in the terminal like output of a program.

    curl https://thingsiplay.eu.pythonanywhere.com/game-random-of-the-week/mame/text
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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Depends to what you compare. Many CSS (worse if it uses JavaScript) is ugly and I prefer the native look without CSS. But only if the content works well, which they often don't... And that's ugly design.

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    • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    I forgot about my Gemini capsule, haha

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    [–] 4 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    It's kind of meaningless but very interesting at the same time :D

    Just a week ago I put my bog on there: gemini://jeena.net

    The thing is also that there was no server available for Ubuntu so it would automatically be updated with the system updates. So instead of keeping it up to date manually, I decided to get some help of a coding agent and we made together a simple static file serving Gemini server which I pu on here: https://git.jeena.net/jeena/pollux

    I'm still working on it, especially I want virtual hosts and better parallelism.

    I just hope that the time I put in ti Make it secure payed off and nobody hacks my server. Normally I only work on the application layer.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    The easiest and possibly most secure server I know of is agate, written in Rust. But there are many implementations to start from...

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Yeah, afterwards I actually looked at Agates code specifically to get inspiration for features where I saw the vhost part.

    But like the protocol it was fun to just try out if I can implement something useful.

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    • [–] [S] 2 points 8 months ago

    One huge advantage that I forget to mention: Since Gemini does not use "addictive by design" UI elements popularized by social media companies, like feeds, timelines, likes and upvotes, colourful and distracting elements, endless scrolling, and comments that invite trolling, it feels a lot calmer.

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    [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    My favorite Gemini client for running this protocol is Lagrange. Deedum is also great on Android.

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