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John Goerzen | 18 Aug 2003 20:46
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UMN Gopher 3.0.6 released

Hello,

I have made the release of Gopher 3.0.6.

The big change with this version is that UMN gopherd has been removed from
the distribution.  This change was made for the following reasons:

1. Many other capable servers exist.  PyGopherd specifically supports
   UMN in an often bug-compatible way, and no development effort has been
   expended on gopherd in quite some time.

2. Security problems continue to be found in the legacy gopherd code, and
   due to the development on more modern servers, nobody has the time to
   make a comprehensive security audit of gopherd.

3. New features are more easily added to other servers, and the gopherd
   codebase thus has languished since other servers have appeared.

UMN Gopher, the Gopher client, continues to be part of the distribution.

The last version of Gopher containing gopherd is preserved on the Gopher
site at http://quux.org/devel/gopher/Downloads/old as well as the Subversion
repository.  Anyone interested in maintaining gopherd may contact me, and I
would be happy to help you fork it.

I am designating PyGopherd as the upgrade path for current users of gopherd.
There are other quality Gopher servers out there; the reason I say this is
because PyGopherd has the most complete support for UMN-style .Links, .cap,
etc. files.  PyGopherd may be obtained from
http://quux.org/devel/gopher/pygopherd.
(Continue reading)

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John Goerzen | 18 Aug 2003 20:57
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FW: UMN Gopher 3.0.6 released

Recently, a security bug in UMN gopherd was reported to this list.  However,
the submitter of this bug made no effort to notify me (the maintainer of
this program) of the bug, either before or after the discovery of the bug. 
I heard about it some time later by a bugtraq reader that submitted a bug to
Debian.

UMN gopherd has been not-really-supported since the maturity of alternative
Gopher servers such as PyGopherd and Bucktooth.  With the realization that
better servers than gopherd exist today, that gopherd needs but is not
likely to receive a thorough security audit, that gopherd has been largely
stagnant since the advent of these newer servers, and that migration paths
are available, I have decided to depricate gopherd and remove it from the
Gopher distribution, effective immediately.

All users of gopherd are advised to immediately upgrade to PyGopherd,
available from http://quux.org/devel/gopher/pygopherd.  It is important to
note that all versions of gopherd currently deployed now have known security
holes.

Thanks to UMN for their pioneering work in gopherd.  It has lasted over 11
years and inspired whole new ways of using the Internet.

UMN gopher, the curses-based gopher client, will remain part of the
distribution.

----- Forwarded message from John Goerzen <jgoerzen@...> -----

From: John Goerzen <jgoerzen@...>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 13:46:39 -0500
Reply-To: gopher@...
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Michael L. Umbricht | 23 Aug 2003 16:22

fyi: free-net gopher site


Hello,

Recently I decided to go through our long neglected gopherspace and
clean up the organization.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that
there is still gopher development in progress.

I'm the admin for the Ocean State Free-Net.  Yeah, there are still a few
Free-Nets left.  This one serves the state of Rhode Island.  We're one
of the early members of the (now defunct) National Public Telecomputing
Network.

We've been running our gopher server since about 93-94.  Back then we
were known as osfn.rhilinet.gov  Now at gopher://gopher.osfn.org

Our gopherspace is pretty disorganized, but it's interesting in that it
gives a "snapshot" of what used to be available.  Sort of an online
timecapsule.

-mikeu
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John Goerzen | 23 Aug 2003 22:15
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PyGopherd 2.0 released; Gopher and WAP

Hello,

Today, I have released PyGopherd 2.0.  I have been running the 1.99.x tree
long enough to consider it stable.

Additionally, there is the debut of a major new feature: the WAP protocol.

WAP is a system of accessing the web from mobile phones and is an
international standard.  Pretty much any mobile phone with "web" capability
supports WAP.  WAP lends itself nicely to hierarchical information, and
thus, to Gopher.

To that end, PyGopherd now has built-in WAP support.  If you enable the WAP
protocol in your config file, you get WAP support for free, *including
forms*.  As an example, you can point your WAP-enabled phone to:

http://quux.org:70/wap

WAP clients are first-class Gopher citizens and have access to everything
that any other client would.  For newer mobile phones that also support
HTML, you can seamlessly access HTML resources and links to other WAP and
non-WAP sites.

At the moment, inter-site linking between PyGopherd sites running WAP is not
supported in the generic case (that is, a selector pointing to a different
gopher server will still yield a gopher URL, but you can add
URL:http://www.somehost.com/wap to a special WAP menu).  This may be added
later.

As a side bonus, the WAP protocol also converts text/plain files on-the-fly
(Continue reading)

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John Goerzen | 24 Aug 2003 06:56
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Re: fyi: free-net gopher site

Michael,

Great to hear from you!  I am glad to see some Freenets still around.  And
it's especially good to see some data preserved on there!

One thing I'd caution you about -- if you're running UMN gopherd, it would
be wise to switch to something else (PyGopherd should work as a drop-in
replacement) due to security holes in UMN gopherd.

Adding a link to your site over on quux.org now...

-- John
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Luis Oliveira | 24 Aug 2003 15:09
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Re: PyGopherd 2.0 released; Gopher and WAP

On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 03:15:47PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> Additionally, there is the debut of a major new feature: the WAP protoc=
ol.

Nice, that's pretty cool!! I'm certainly going to try that out.

> PyGopherd is available from http://quux.org:70/devel/gopher/pygopherd o=
r
> gopher://quux.org/1/devel/gopher/pygopherd.

How long until it gets into Debian unstable?

--=20
Lu=EDs Oliveira                                        Lisp is the red pi=
ll.
http://student.dei.uc.pt/~lmoliv/           -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lis=
p=20
Equipa Portuguesa do Translation Project
http://www2.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard/po/registry.cgi?team=3Dpt
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John Goerzen | 24 Aug 2003 21:35
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Re: PyGopherd 2.0 released; Gopher and WAP

On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 02:09:28PM +0100, Luis Oliveira wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 03:15:47PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> > Additionally, there is the debut of a major new feature: the WAP protoc=
> ol.
> 
> Nice, that's pretty cool!! I'm certainly going to try that out.

Incidentally, version 2.0.2 added WAP autodetection for browsers.  So you
can point a mobile phone to the same http URL as you'd use for a browser,
and PyGopherd should automatically detect that it's a mobile phone and serve
up the WAP version with no additional hinting.

> > PyGopherd is available from http://quux.org:70/devel/gopher/pygopherd o=
> r
> > gopher://quux.org/1/devel/gopher/pygopherd.
> 
> How long until it gets into Debian unstable?

It has been uploaded and accepted, so figure about a day or so.

The same .debs that I uploaded to unstable ar on the quux site.

-- John
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Brian | 24 Aug 2003 21:46

Re: PyGopherd 2.0 released; Gopher and WAP

On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 03:15:47PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> Additionally, there is the debut of a major new feature: the WAP protocol.

So do you all think this could be the niche that will bring gopher
back to popularity again?

  --Brian
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smoerk | 25 Aug 2003 18:12
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Re: PyGopherd 2.0 released; Gopher and WAP

Brian wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 03:15:47PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> 
>>Additionally, there is the debut of a major new feature: the WAP protocol.
> 
> 
> So do you all think this could be the niche that will bring gopher
> back to popularity again?

nothing can bring gopher to popularity again.
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Thomas | 25 Aug 2003 18:56
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Re: PyGopherd 2.0 released; Gopher and WAP

Hello smoerk,

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 18:12:09 +0200 GMT (25/08/2003, 23:12 +0700 GMT),
smoerk wrote:

> nothing can bring gopher to popularity again.

I admire your optimism, and your attempt at marketing. ;-)

- Would you care to elaborate?

--

-- 

Cheers,
Thomas.

Moderator der deutschen The Bat! Beginner Liste.

Once you've seen a shopping center, you've seen a mall.

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