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# Gopher
Gopher (allegedly from "go for information") is a [network](network.md) [protocol](protocol.md) for publishing, browsing and downloading files and is known as a much simpler alternative to the [World Wide Web](www.md) (i.e. to [HTTP](http.md) and [HTML](html.md)). In fact it competed with the Web in its early days and even though the Web won in the mainstream, gopher still remains used by small communities (usually the more dedicated though, see e.g. [bitreich](bitreich.md)). Gopher is like the Web but well designed, it is the [suckless](suckless.md)/[KISS](kiss.md) way of doing what the Web does, it contains practically no [bloat](bloat.md) and so [we](lrs.md) highly advocate its use. Gopher inspired creation of [Gemini](gemini.md), a similar but bit more complex and "[modern](modern.md)" protocol, and the two together have recently become the main part of so called [Smol Internet](smol_internet.md). Gopher is much better than Gemini though. The set of all public gopher servers is called gopherspace. The Gopher protocol was defined in 1993 in [RFC](rfc.md) 1436.
Gopher (allegedly from "go for information") is a [network](network.md) [protocol](protocol.md) for publishing, browsing and downloading files and is known as a much [simpler](kiss.md) alternative to the [World Wide Web](www.md) (i.e. to [HTTP](http.md) and [HTML](html.md)). In fact it competed with the Web in its early days and even though the Web eventually eclipsed gopher in the mainstream, the underdog still remains alive and kicking, used by small communities (usually the more dedicated though, see e.g. [bitreich](bitreich.md)). Gopher is like the Web but well designed, it is the [suckless](suckless.md)/[KISS](kiss.md) way of doing what the Web does, it contains practically no [bloat](bloat.md) and so [we](lrs.md) highly advocate its use. Gopher inspired creation of [Gemini](gemini.md), a similar but bit more complex and "[modern](modern.md)" protocol, and the two together have recently become the main part of so called [Smol Internet](smol_internet.md). Gopher is much better than Gemini though. The set of all public gopher servers is called gopherspace. The Gopher protocol was defined in 1993 in [RFC](rfc.md) 1436.
Gopher **doesn't use any [encryption](encryption.md)** (though some servers allow access via [Tor](tor.md)... actually there's also some kinda encrypted "gophers" protocol too, but still it seems encrypting is thankfully not so popular at this point). **This is good, encryption is [bloat](bloat.md)**. Gopher also doesn't really know or care about [Unicode](unicode.md) and similar bloat (which mostly serves trannies to insert emojis of pregnant men into readmes anyway, we don't need that), it's basically just [ASCII](ascii.md) (of course you can employ Unicode as gopher just transfers files really, it's just that Unicode is not part of gopher's specification and most people prefer to keep it ASCII). Gopher's simple design is intentional, the authors deemed simplicity a [good](good.md) feature. Gopher is so simple that you may very well write your own client and server and comfortably use them -- **you can even browse gopher just by manually using [telnet](telnet.md)** to communicate with the server.