Gopher

Gopher

The committee meeting where the team first presented the Gopher protocol was a disaster, “literally the worst meeting I’ve ever seen,” says Alberti. “I still remember a woman in pumps jumping up and down and shouting, ‘You can’t do that!’ ”

Among the team's offenses: Gopher didn’t use a mainframe computer (it used a a Mac SE/30) and its server-client setup empowered anyone with a PC, not a central authority. While it did everything required and then some, to the committee it felt like a middle finger. “You’re not supposed to have written this!” Alberti says of the group’s reaction. “This is some lark, never do this again!” The Gopher team was forbidden from further work on the protocol.

“Everyone would answer phones at least one day a week,” Lindner says, “even if you were programming. That way you were close to the pain you were inflicting on people — if programmers today still took calls, we’d have more user-friendly software.”

Originally shared by Damn interesting
https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol

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