Dioscuri, another application layer protocol

[Sandra Snan]

Complexity inside the server I don't particularly fear.
My biggest fear for Gemini has been a proliferation of protocols.
"Protocols" defined loosely, not just as foo:// but as whenever a
computer asks something of another and expects a reply in a particular
format.

That fear was behind my hesitiation re codifying behavior in the alt
text strings earlier.

As for whatever a server does on its own, I leave great allowance.
Requests being files in a file system or routes in an MVC. But when two
computers talk to each other, that's the point when two giant spinning
spheres of grinding greebles speeding through space need to make
contact. Need to get on the same page on what they are doing.

We'll look back years from now when gemspace collective standards have a
complexity that overshadows that of the W3C specifications, and maybe
we'll recognize that this moment, this post was the Rubicon. Maybe we'll
think that the Pandora lid was already peeked through to the point of no
salvation, since an arbitrary sequence of GET requests could become a
protocol.

Even if the future disastrous level of complexity is inevitable, I'm not
convinced it needs to be parallel. When we are proposing protocols that
could already be done through existing standards (such as https) I ask
that there is very good reason why.

"Oh, it's chill, any particular client and any particular server can use
this for ANY semantics" only makes me more concerned, since it's the
foundation for a hundred hundreds of protocols.

I see how we want [comments, posting, uploading, interaction, talking]
between the clients and the server. The equiv of "textarea" and dinky
li'l radio buttons, and POST requests are necessary for that. But where
are the fences? Slippery slope? More like abyss sans railing.

Sometimes there IS very good reason to scrap and start over. To
voluntarily do a https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png because you
have experience with possible use cases, good and bad, and you know how
to implement a simpler, coherent solution to sit beside the palimpsest
of wire hangers and chewing gum that preceded and inspired it.

Starting a new pile of junk next to the old pile of junk because you've
started having a hard time finding things in the old pile will
ultimately just leave you with two piles of junk.

The question raised by this isn't just "why Dioscuri?" It's "why should
we not use sftp, https, JSON, XML, sexp, IRC, SMTP, foo bar baz frotz
for this problem?" That isn't rhetorical. There could be good answers. I
just can't think of them.

The road to reckless complexity is spelled NIH with a ribbon bookmark.