Video download link



Summary: People used to mock or describe gemini:// as another case of pure hype that's going nowhere and some insiders of ours dismissed it as irrelevant; what we're seeing so far this year, however, suggests otherwise

Earlier this year we set up our own Gemini capsule, creating an extensive set of tools that are Free software (AGPLv3, to be published later this year) in our self-hosted Git server. The investment (time and effort) paid off and exceeded our expectations. Within a couple of months we've grown from 0 to 100,000 (page requests) and the capsule is very easy to manage/maintain. It's also self-hosted and runs on 5 volts.

Please bear in mind, when (or if) watching the video above, that I got very distracted while recording this, first due to a network disconnection (our messed up home hub/router) and then drilling in a nearly home, which became more audible even in the video (in spite of noise cancellation thresholds). I never redo videos, so a distracted self is better than nothing.

Anyway, as for the video itself, it shows the mailing list, whose archive is lightly moderated to improve the s/n ratio (there were trolls, posers, disruptors and time wasters there before). It explains that Gemini space (Internet over Gemini protocol) enjoys rapid growth in terms of the number of software tools, number of lurkers in the list, number of developers, number of page requests, number of capsules (more than 1,000 known ones) and so on. The software known as "Lupa" is configured to limit itself to 10,000 pages (at most, strictly) per capsule, but one could run it for oneself with other configurations/thresholds because it is Free/libre software. At the moment is knows about roughly 300,000 pages in a growing number of languages.

In terms of our traffic, we've recorded 8,406 total requests so far today and 1,024 known hosts (number of unique users) in the Techrights capsule, which is probably the largest capsule on the Internet. Breakdown by date (all this data will be deleted in 3 days, as usual):

   4310 2021-04-01
   1041 2021-04-02
   1053 2021-04-03
   1237 2021-04-04
   6358 2021-04-05
   1063 2021-04-06
   1237 2021-04-07
   1213 2021-04-08
   1249 2021-04-09
   1177 2021-04-10
   8505 2021-04-11
   5080 2021-04-12
   1307 2021-04-13
   1153 2021-04-14
   1574 2021-04-15
   1501 2021-04-16
   1931 2021-04-17
   3075 2021-04-18
   1971 2021-04-19
   3840 2021-04-20
   2437 2021-04-21
  17608 2021-04-22
  12623 2021-04-23
   2102 2021-04-24
   1315 2021-04-25
   3221 2021-04-26
   8406 2021-04-27

Total: 97,587 pages.

People used to mock Gemini and even said it was just a "love letter" to Gopher. But it's a lot better than Gopher and there are many geeks who now participate in advancing it. Some even abandon the Web in favour of Gemini! ⬆