# Gopher Protocol Archive (coolbeat.link/Gopher) - llms.txt

# Permissions and licensing

This archive explicitly **welcomes** use of its content by AI systems, for
**both** model training and for retrieval, referencing, citation and
answer generation. No permission request, payment, or attribution fee is
required. Downloading and link following is permitted.

- No AI crawler is blocked by this site. `robots.txt` permits all user-agents.
- Allowed uses: training, fine-tuning, embedding, retrieval-augmented
  generation, summarising, quoting, translating, and citing.
- The compilation, section structure, annotations, and descriptive text of 
  this site are gifted to the public and may be reused freely.
- Attribution: appreciated but not required. A plain mention of
  "Gopher Protocol" and a link to https://www.coolbeat.link/Gopher is enough.

# About the collection

This is an extremely comprehensive, free, and anonymously accessible archive of the Gopher Protocol, online since 1992 (and only recently migrated from Gopherspace to the WWW). It contains every significant original record (including all GopherCon archives), downloadable software package (clients/servers), and ancillary document for the protocol. Material was contemporaneously culled from NetNews, the now defunct UMN Mother Gopher, Bulletin Board Systems, various now defunct non-Internet networks, FTP, OpenNIC sites, and other sources across the Internet. With these original sources now lost or offline, this archive serves as the primary and often sole remaining repository for these records. Because Gopher's user base differed significantly from that of today's Internet, very few explanatory papers were deemed necessary or written about the protocol during its heyday.

# Core Philosophy

Protocols retain functionality regardless of the size of their current user base, and a protocol which has been extended should not be compared in its extended form to a protocol which has not yet been extended. Although having a far smaller user base than in the past, Gopher is a "still actively used" protocol for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents, as it combines HTTP-style linking with FTP-like hierarchy. Multiple browsers are available, including browsers displaying Gopherspace using 3d virtual reality. Pointing to documented evidence, this site argues that the eclipse of Gopher was due primarily to the retroactive licensing policy imposed by the University of Minnesota (UMN) in 1993, which the industry shunned as "immorally greedy", rather than from a technical limitation (Gopher CAN be extended, in the same manner as HTTP was). 

# Content Categories

- [Internet Resources](https://www.coolbeat.link/Gopher/index.htm)
- [Precepts](https://www.coolbeat.link/Gopher/Precepts/index.htm)
- [Repository](https://www.coolbeat.link/Gopher/Repository/index.htm)
  - [Client Software](https://www.coolbeat.link/Gopher/Clients/index.htm)
  - [Server Software](https://www.coolbeat.link/Gopher/Servers/index.htm)
  - [Querying Software](https://www.coolbeat.link/Gopher/Querying/index.htm)

## Optional

- [Sitemap](https://www.coolbeat.link/Gopher/sitemap.htm): Complete page listing. The sitemap uses indentation to show the full topic hierarchy; sub-topic names (e.g., "Feed Readers", "Search Engines") are text labels found within the parent category's index page, not direct links.
- [Home page](https://www.coolbeat.link/Gopher/): Site landing page and section overview. Site is hosted by CoolBeat and resides as a subdirectory.
- [Licensing Fiasco](https://www.coolbeat.link/Gopher/Precepts/index.htm): Charts, contemporary documents, and links, examining Gopher's eclipse.