What a time capsule of how early free-ish software tried to monetize itself and the odd politics of University computer systems.<p>I was curious about Yen and saw a small bio about him:<p><a href="https://chinacenter.umn.edu/umn-china/history/alumni/distinguished-alumni/yen-shih-pau" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://chinacenter.umn.edu/umn-china/history/alumni/disting...</a><p>Its a bit interesting, and shocking, some of the members of the teams behind proto-HTTP software in the 90s were college graduates in the early 60s. If I'm doing my math correctly Yen would be in his 80's today.
The great mistake I see here: everyone worth discussing is an <i>organization</i>.<p>The best corners of the internet are not groups of people: they are collections of <i>content</i>. The content cannot pay you a license fee. The content cannot demand itself be constrained to non-profit ends.
I remember using Mosaic for the first time and thinking that it sucked ass in comparison to gopher - so much less information available, and it was very hard to just browse the hierarchy to see what was on a server.<p>On the other hand, I kind of miss Mosaic's ability to easily turn off image loading. There's more than a few sites that'd be improved by using that feature.
<p><pre><code> > Remember when UNIX was given away free?
> How many of you are using UNIX now? It is licensed.
</code></pre>
Fast forward 30 years... or 20. Ten, for that matter.
Good article on the history of Gopher:<p>The rise and fall of the Gopher protocol<p><a href="https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-goph...</a>