Gemini protocol
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The Gemini protocol is an alternative to HTTP with similar use-cases, with intentional consideration of privacy and security, that could be an alternative way to serve an IndieWeb site.
Marketing Summary
From the Project Gemini FAQ "What is Gemini?":
You may think of Gemini as "the web, stripped right back to its essence" or as "Gopher, souped up and modernised a little", depending upon your perspective.
Gemini is intended to be simple, but not necessarily as simple as possible. Instead, the design strives to maximise its "power to weight ratio", while keeping its weight within acceptable limits. Gemini is also intended to be very privacy conscious, to be difficult to extend in the future (so that it will *stay* simple and privacy conscious), and to be compatible with a "do it yourself" computing ethos. For this last reason, Gemini is technically very familiar and conservative: it's a protocol in the traditional client-server request-response paradigm, and is built on mature, standardised technology like URIs, MIME media types, and TLS.
A person can start a Geminispace and host if from a low-end device at home.
Gemini sites are called "capsules" and are hosted by Gemini protocol servers.
To access Gemini sites with current web browsers an Web-to-Gemini proxy is necessary.
Software
There are dedicated servers and clients available for many platforms.
Past Projects
- Flounder: http://web.archive.org/web/20201128195017/https://sr.ht/~alexwennerberg/flounder/ actual link https://sr.ht/~alexwennerberg/flounder/ is 404 since 2022-09-02 or earlier.
- ^ source code can now be found on https://git.alexwennerberg.com/flounder/
Gemtext Format
Gemini capsules consists of files made up using the Gemtext markup language, but the protocol serve any file format.
Capsule owners can keep a gemlog for posting a blog on Gemini.
Publication
Aggregators will collect new gemlog posts, which can also be served as Atoms feeds.
The platform has search engines dedicated to finding content on Gemini sites.
Specifications
- https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
- https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/
- https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi
Examples
- https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users/hundredrabbits/
- https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space:1965/~solderpunk/gemlog/
- Web proxy to gemini://gem.johanbove.info Johan's Geminispace Source Code
- Web proxy to gemini://tilde.team/~ew0k
- Web proxy to gemini://breadpunk.club/~bagel
Hosting
- Gemlog.blue provides a quick and easy way for people to keep a gemlog (journal) over the gemini protocol
Aggregators
Search Engines
Reactions
- https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2020/11/a-gopher-view-of-gemini.html
- https://drewdevault.com/2020/11/01/What-is-Gemini-anyway.html
- https://thedorkweb.substack.com/p/gopher-gemini-and-the-smol-internet
See Also
- https://indieweb.social/tags/GeminiProtocol
- CSS Naked Day
- the tragedy of gemini
- The Agregore browser supports accessing content via the gemini:// protocol
- controversy over favicons https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/2021/005481.html
- ^ background and meta issues of governance, power dynamics, tone: #199 Remove favicon support
- https://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2020-05-30_This_site_via_Gemini
- discussion of the spec by the curl author https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/05/28/the-gemini-protocol-seen-by-this-http-client-person/
- Gemini Mention - a version of Webmention for Gemini protocol