My recent musings on Gopher-commerce. Humbly submitted to the community for discussion…
Ok, y’all. I’ve really appreciated all the early feedback on this, and it’s gotten me inspired to keep the momentum going on this thing by getting just a few (30 total) stickers printed up for our gopher community to try this out. As part of a bigger thing I’m doing, (phlog post explaining the whole thing a little better forthcoming…) I’ve posted a page for checking out these stickers and providing a means to move forward testing some of what’s been discussed here – send me an email w/ PayPal, or send me a SASE w/ $2, etc… Given the small number, (a test batch I hope will sell right out. ;)) go ahead and send an to sales@frstcomputer.com to reserve a spot – first come, first…
https://phroxy.z3bra.org/gopher.frstcomputer.com:70/1/stickers
(btw, @wgs, I hope you don’t mind my using your proxy… I couldn’t figure out the best way to share the plain gopher:// link. Lemmy seemed to be struggling with it…)
I was surprised to see it to be honest (in a good way!). I have no issue with other people using it, but be aware that it’s very simple (read “stupid”), and could break in many different ways.
IMO you shouldn’t try to replace the web with gopher. For me it had a single purpose: share files. If you want to make a payment, you shouldn’t use gopher as it’s simply not meant for that. It should probably be a different protocol for that, something peer-to-peet rather than centralized like gopher is ?
As for encryption, there were some proposal to add it to gopher (and working ones!). IMO the best way would be to do encryption at the network level rather than at the protocol. But we’re far from here :)
How is gopher centralized?
My gopher hole is hosted on a single server, and to access it, everyone has to connect to it. This is opposed to the concept of decentralization you can have in IPFS for example, where I would publish a phlog entry directly from my computer, and you’d connect directly to my computer to get it. Then we have two copies on the network (yours and mine), so anyone can grab either of this copies to retrieve it. It’s decentralized in the sense that you are not forced to grab the content from a central place.
Note that centralization isn’t bad per se. Gopher is centralized, it’s a fact, but it’s not necessarily bad. For stuff like payment, relying on a central place isn’t ideal though because you must rely and trust a 3rd party to handle your money.
I bought an 1802 kit from TMSI and it could have been done over Gopher. Out-of-band payment and I had to fill out and send an order form. It went really well and I’d definitely do it again. An experiment in this space could be low-stakes; stickers or something. If Gopher is best thought of as an improvement on FTP, Gopher commerce is an improvement on sending an SASE with a dollar bill. I’d try it.
This is really encouraging, thanks! Yeah, this is really what I’ve been thinking, too. Was thinking about stickers and even T-shirts… Wanted to get them printed at a local shop, too – seemed especially appropriate.
Also thinking about this for slightly larger-ticket items… not unlike that sweet 1802 kit of yours, actually. :)
It might be worth thinking about some kind of rating system or method for confirming purchases a la Reddit marketplaces. Maybe buyers can create a gopher-accessible file with purchase details and sellers can link to that as a way of building a reputation.
You’ve actually convinced me that this was at least a reasonable idea but I don’t think a gopherhole shop rating system would be in theme with the closely knit community dynamic we have.
The protocol was going to have a feature-rich, shopping-friendly set of extensions, but when this was proposed in 1993, there was a community backlash against commercialising the gopher; read Albert Rosetti’s booklet about what happened. This is roughly how the gopher protocol became both liberated and hyperstable in the early 90s.
Imagine if a gopher wanted to sell or otherwise pass on some old computer hardware. It makes sense to share that on their gopherhole: And since payment handling is ~ always legally middle-manned by a payment handler who will handle the payment anyway, the protocol wouldn’t need to be extended to be a payment processer.
On the other hand, I would be against paving paradise to put up a parking lot.
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Yes, 100%.
One of the challenges will be getting order information from the buyer to the seller in a way that is consistent and error-free. Item numbers, unit prices, shipping, tax, total due. Without a shopping cart application, sellers might be best served by bundling shipping and tax into the item price. Alternatively, gopher commerce could make use of a purchase order/invoice pattern. That’s a bit more work for everyone, but should reduce miscommunication.
