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Proposal about content-size and hash

Martin Keegan martin at no.ucant.org

Tue Nov 3 15:43:17 GMT 2020

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On Tue, 3 Nov 2020, Ali Fardan wrote:

If so many people are not satisfied with the protocol as is without an
insane amount of features, why don't you move to a different protocol
that satisfies your needs? Or rather, define your own, the only reason

The problem, as I see it, is that some people want there *not* to be a simple protocol, and will propose modifications to make it extensible. The minimalist attitude is perceived, wrongly, by some people as self-righteous and worthy of being taken down a peg or two; there are also other reasons for wanting to drive up the cost of information sharing online.

If the lack of features in Gemini means people go off and use some other, possibly new or incompatible, protocol, that's not too much of a problem, and more people's preferences will be satisfied. It may be that those who want a minimalist protocol should spec up a non-minimalist protocol and implement that, and then tell everyone who wants Gemini not to be minimalist to go and use this other protocol. In the presence of a viable alternative protocol to Gemini, the remaining arguments in favour of extending Gemini would much more obviously be in bad faith.

On the other hand, if eventually Solderpunk gives in and makes Gemini extensible, then the supporters of a minimalist protocol will just go and make their own new protocol and the cycle of agitation against minimalism will repeat, so one's just competing for the Gemini name and mindshare.

Mk

-- Martin Keegan, @mk270, https://mk.ucant.org/