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Finger and Old Protocols

2022-12-12

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I've been reading about the Finger protocol over the weekend, and I'm quite intrigued by it.

For how much I love the small Internet, I don't know very much about it beyond Gemini and some Gopher. It's always fascinating to me when I read about some old protocol that's been repurposed in to a robust communication system and see a simple but vibrant community build around them, especially when the protocol already exists but was simply forgotten. I'm reminded of urban explorers or researchers digging into the archives of an ancient library: the world of possibilities is already there, just waiting to be discovered.

I'd like to run a Finger server on the same machine that hosts my capsule. However, my current OS is Rocky Linux, and Finger packages were removed from the upstream Red Hat repositories all the way at RHEL 7. There are some independently-developed Finger servers out there, but I haven't had the time to try compiling or running them yet.

My dream is that the small Internet might one day reclaim an existing protocol and use it to engage in decentralization communication and sharing, like BitTorrent or I2P does. I'd love to see an old technology be given a new life by empowering people to self-host content and encourage direct communication, rather than relying on big centralized services.

Perhaps Quote of the Day might save us.

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[Last updated: 2022-12-12]