A proposal to freeze the Gemini specification

[panda-roux]

> Gemini can concentrate on supporting server-to-many-client situations while Spartan can concentrate on client-to-server communication.

I am not sure what you mean by this. Would you mind clarifying what "client-to-server" means in this context?

If I had to guess, I'd guess you're referring to something analogous to an HTTP "POST" request (presumably in contrast to Gemini acting more like a "GET" in most cases)?

Thanks, 

panda-roux


On October 26, 2021 1:48:32 AM UTC, Rohan Kumar <seirdy@seirdy.one> wrote:
>A TLDR: the ecosystem can evolve without changing/breaking the existing 
>spec. Let's freeze the spec soon!
>
>On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 11:21:04PM +0000, mntn wrote:
>>I think you may be asking for a heavier process than is warranted. It 
>>is my personal hope that there will be no further versions of the spec 
>>once finalized,
>
>Agreed that the Gemini spec seems feature-complete for now. There was a 
>time when I would've liked to see features like compression and tables, 
>but the spec doesn't prevent anyone from serving up an alternate 
>mimetype like text/gemini+gzip or csv. Clients like Lagrange can load a 
>CSV document from a link as an inline table just like they load inline 
>images (following a user gesture, ofc). This is a good example of adding 
>functionality to the ecosystem without adding functionality to the spec.
>
>>other than perhaps a change from TLS should it ever become extremely 
>>obsolete, decades from now.
>
>Also agreed that it might be necessary to deprecate some TLS versions as 
>time goes by, but that should be quite straightforward: deprecate one 
>version of TLS, have capsules stop supporting it while clients support 
>old and new versions, and then remove support from clients.
>
>Speaking of TLS: ome people from the netsec crowd have bristled at 
>Gemini's TOFU model, but I don't think fixing that should require 
>changes in the spec either.  Adding e.g. a DHT of some sort doesn't have 
>to change how the Gemini protocol works; it can simply be a thing users 
>use to verify certs "out of band" the first time they visit a capsule.  
>Stuff like Tor hidden services are also a good fit for Gemini (I think 
>the part of the Gemini Space accessible over Tor is called "Deep Space") 
>and can mitigate the issues inherent to TOFU without changing the spec.
>
>Adding features is typically misguided: it's better to *complement* 
>Gemini with other protocols suited for other purposes than to *extend* 
>it. One such protocol is the spartan:// client-to-server protocol.  
>Gemini can concentrate on supporting server-to-many-client situations 
>while Spartan can concentrate on client-to-server communication.
>
>(This is not necessarily an endorsement of Spartan; I do have some 
>issues with it, but that's off-topic).
>
>The ecosystem can evolve, but the spec seems about done.
>
>Welcome back, Solderpunk.
>