HTTP is a bloated protocol.

Any visit to the website of a large company will tell you this. Significant sizes of applications (often over 5 megabytes!), load times, and the constant reminder to consent to cookies are all emblematic of what our internet has become – a service hostile to its users for the sake of profit. Practically every website you visit tracks your information to collect both analytics and personal data, assembling a profile of you that can be sold to advertisers, government agencies and whoever else wants a cut of your data.

Gemini is a new protocol for browsing the internet founded by solderpunk. it's designed only to serve data, and intends to foster a friendlier internet – one in which arbitrary information can't be passed from consumer to producer no matter what the motivation.

Gemini can be thought of as the HTTPS equivalent of Gopher: all traffic is secured and encrypted.

Why HTTP beat Gopher.

Put this wiki on Gemini soon.

Tools

Gemini Diagnostics
A 'torture test' for Gemini servers.

Agate
A Gemini server in Rust.

Gig
A Gemini framework in Go.

geminid
gemini server in C

Castor
A GTK-based browser for Gopher and Gemini.

Asuka
A Rust-based Gemini client.

• A list of Gemini clients.
• A list of all currently known Gemini software.
• Flounder, a Gemini/HTTPS host for simple sites.
• mbrubeck/agate: Very simple server for the Gemini hypertext protocol

Sites

The Tildeverse on Gemini. A Tilde blog. A Gemini search engine. Locate the YouTube layer! A neat Gemini blog. Gemini best practices

Why Gemini?

https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.txt distribution of arbitrary files; has special consideration for serving lightweight format that allows linking between files! maintained by solderpunk@sdf.org middle child: minimalist proof of concept designed for simplicity, basic client creation and usability privacy! the internet is not a safe place for plaintext. generality!

tls ? gopher can be written from scratch! but gopher still depends on ip stack, dns resolver and filesystem. using tls for cryptography is necessary. tls limits access to more modern machines, but it makes no sense to sacrifice all privacy protections to accomodate them.