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[announce] Gemini in 2021

Solderpunk solderpunk at posteo.net

Fri Jan 1 18:07:45 GMT 2021

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Happy New Year, Geminauts!

This seems like a good opportunity to make the maiden post to the[announce] topic.

None of you need to be reminded that 2020 was an eventful and unusualyear, and the situation was no different in Geminispace! Whileobviously a new internet protocol of deliberately humble scope is notremotely as important as the other issues which defined last year, atleast there was one small part of our lives where the events of 2020were, on the whole, very positive.

At the start of the year, Gemini was around six months old and still afairly small and quiet project. But starting around May we hit HackerNews and other high profile social sites multiple times, resulting in anexplosive growth of interest in and discussion about the protocol. Notall of it was positive, but nevertheless by the year's end the ecosystemhad expanded significantly. Many new software implementations, servers,services and users joined this fledgling space in 2020, and there are nosigns of this growth slowing down. It's been tremendously gratifyingfor me to see so many people embrace the ideas and philosophy of Gemini.The project has grown larger than I ever expected, faster than I everexpected. Lots of people have written me very kind emails of thanks,saying that the internet feels more fun for them than it has in decades,and each one has made me very happy.

This success has been a bit of a double-edged sword, though. Thedemands on my time and attention as Benevolent Dictator of the projecthave grown beyond what's sustainable, and the model of using a single,unmoderated mailing list as a venue for any and all discussion of allaspects of the project is really starting to strain at the edges. I amhoping to make a number of changes to the project early in 2021 toprovide some much needed relief to the entire community, and I'd liketo roughly outline my plans in this email.

On the technical side, the protocol specification is rapidly movingtoward a stage where there are no further major changes orclarifications to make. I hope that sometime this month it will bepossible to effectively finalise the current "speculative specification"document. At this point, the [spec] topic of the mailing list will beretired, and the project will transition to a new phase where theprimary ongoing technical activity is to translate that speculativespecification into a more precise and formal technical document, withthe goal that it might eventually be submitted to formal internetstandard organisations like IETF and IANA.

This translation process is important, but not, I would argue, urgent oreven terribly interesting for most people involved in Gemini morebroadly. Protocol specifications *should* be precise and formal, butwhat we have currently is, empirically speaking, clearly good enough tofacilitate reliable inter-operability between implementations. Geminihas an astonishing breadth of client and server implementations for sucha young protocol, with clients available for every major platform,including mobile devices, and at least in my experience everything workstogether very nicely indeed. We should be very proud of thisaccomplishment! It shouldn't be necessary for anybody but the mostinterested of hardcore protocol geeks to follow the translation processclosely while it happens. From the point of view of most developers,the project should be considered more or less "done" very soon.

I don't yet know exactly how the translation process will happen. Icertainly don't want to do it alone, and I expect I will gladly delegatea lot of the work, while still remaining involved. I want the processto be publically visible, but not necessarily open to unbounded publicparticipation, like the initial design of the protocol was. Very littleactual technical decision making should be involved in this translationprocess. If the attempt to formalise the specification revealsadditional small inconsistencies or ambiguities, these will be resolvedwith the smallest possible changes and with concern for compatibilitywith existing practices.

If you have previous experience working with IETF and/or IANA and youfeel like you might like to be involved in some stage of this process,please feel free to reach out to me off-list.

On a more community-oriented note, I would also like to overhaul theproject's public face and delegate some of the responsibility ofmanaging it. I plan to transition the project to a new domain thisyear, rather than stick with gemini.circumlunar.space. That domain wasonly used because I already owned circumlunar.space for other purposes.I would like to separate the two projects more, and give Gemini aneasier to remember domain which is more closely tied to its ownidentity. Naturally I will maintain redirects from the old domain fora long time - this is exactly what redirects in Gemini were intended toallow. It would be great if exactly the same information was availablesimultaneously over Gopher, Gemini and HTTPS, if this information wasbetter organised and curated than it is currently, and if documentslike the FAQ were translated into other languages. It would be great ifthere was an easier way for people to submit or suggest changes,corrections, translations, etc. than sending email to a single point ofcontact.

I don't, frankly, really know what the easiest way to achieve this is.If you have ideas, and especially if you are willing to donate time orresources to help, feel free to reach out to me off-list. I would verymuch like the solution not to involve any commercial services, such asGitHub, and naturally the HTTPS version of the site should be totallyfree of cookies, Javascript, analytics, etc. Probably it should just bederived directly from the Gemini version of the site using a tool likeKineto (https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/kineto/). I don't mind at all if thestyling of the site is something a little "nicer" than what's there now,as long as it remains clean, uncluttered, accessible and consists of asingle short stylesheet, and once the new framework is in place I amhappy for people who want to volunteer a design to reach out to me to doso.

Obviously, having any kind of control over the project's public sites isa high-trust position and I'd be much happier delegating this tosomebody with whom I've already had some interaction in the past and whohas displayed some clear commitment to the project.

If you'd like to volunteer to translate the FAQ or Best Practicesdocument into another language, please reach out to me off-list. I'mhappy to start including these translations in the current version ofthe site even before the transition to whatever new approach hopefullyemerges.

If you'd like to volunteer to play some role in moderating the mailinglist to help make it more a welcoming and civil place in the future,please feel free to reach out to me off-list. I don't know yet whetherthis might involve actually assigning some degree of admin rights topeople or just having people keep a close eye on things and alert me ifthey think things are getting out of hand. But something will need tobe put in place, as I personally absolutely cannot maintain anindefinite close eye on the entire list.

While I've outlined a lot of changes and work for the project's officialpublic presence, I also want to emphasise my belief that as Geminispacecontinues to grow larger and faster, and as the protocol moves towardtechnically maturity, there is actually less and less need for a single,central, official public presence, and that the realistic scope of sucha presence becomes smaller and smaller. Neither the web nor Gopher haveany such presence. That's not to say there isn't material availableover either protocol to introduce newcomers, explain the protocol'stechnical or philosophical underpinnings or point people toward popularand/or new content. Instead, that important content is distributedacross many locations and is produced and maintained by the community atlarge. I see no reason that Gemini should be any different. Obviouslywe're not quite at the same stage as either of those protocols, butstill, I expect that by the end of 2021 the official site will havemoved into a fairly static state, and continued community-buildingactivities will take place elsewhere.

Finally, I want to say a big thank you to every single person who playeda role large or small in 2020 in helping to spread awareness of Gemini,in steering the design of the protocol, in writing software of any kind,in setting up servers or, most importantly of all, in writing content.We have come a long way in a short time and I look forward to usmaintaining this energy in the new year.

Cheers!Solderpunk