Repeating the Web's Mistakes (was gemini+submit:// (was Re: Uploading Gemini content))

[Jason McBrayer]

Koushik Roy <koushik at meff.me> writes:

> All that said, I'm not convinced that an in-band Gemini posting
> mechanism is the correct answer. I prefer a solution that involves the
> community standardizing around some other mechanism to upload content,
> and then building/popularizing apps (native or not) that use this
> mechanism. To make this more concrete, I can imagine a scenario where
> apps are built on top of FTPS to allow users to author content and
> then transparently have them appear in a Gemini capsule. Swap FTPS
> with one of many other mechanisms, such as SFTP, NNTPS, Email, what
> have you.

I strongly agree with this. For me, the attraction of Gemini is that the
web is no longer a suitable protocol for document delivery, because most
sites require very large, complex browsers that are optimized for use as
an application runtime. If every webserver were running Shizaru, I could
use a reasonable browser like Lynx or Dillo, but that's not realistic
today. I want a document-sharing ecosystem that is not going to expand
to require runtimes for untrusted remote applications.

I don't really feel that we are lacking in file copying protocols, or
that any of the existing file copying protocols are problematic in the
same way that http(s) is. While some of them (SCP? Rsync over SSH?
git+ssh?) may be complex to implement from scratch, they also are mostly
encapsulated by small programs that can be scripted. I also realize
titan: is a separate protocol, but I'm not sure it does the same job as
Gemini of solving a problem that needs to be solved. I'm afraid it's
more like the tendency of the web to replace all other protocols with
extensions of itself.

-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+  
| Jason F. McBrayer                    jmcbray at carcosa.net  |  
| If someone conquers a thousand times a thousand others in |  
| battle, and someone else conquers himself, the latter one |  
| is the greatest of all conquerors.  --- The Dhammapada    |