[ddevault]

Nether X11 nor the web are stable. They are hulking behemoths that require the constant effort of lots of skilled programmers to keep working and up-to-date with the rapidly moving ecosystem around them. X11 cannot keep up with new hardware. The web cannot keep up with its maintenance load. They're well beyond the point of redemption.

In fact, they're both classic examples of the opposite approach to what my article argues for: they did not start saying "no" to ideas. They never constrained their scope to focus on stability and longevity. A website which works today could easily be broken tomorrow, which has only become true in recent memory. These are excellent examples of the consequences of not holding true to the ethos I describe.

[pwdisswordfish0]

The message is a contradiction. When you say that websites starting to break "has only become true in recent memory", you're just confirming the truth about the stability of the Web mentioned earlier, nothing else. You're playing with definitions, but not much more. If that kind of play is valid and your post is truly meant to describe an ethos of "saying no" (though sounds more like more retroactive argumentation), then there's nothing that stops "Gemini" from being defined as an intersection-by-proper-subset of HTTP, etc. Go ahead, commence with calling the 2005-era Web "done" by just saying "no". You'll be able to do with it whatever you want to do with Gemini. If you find that's still too much, then just say "no" more aggressively, right?

But that's not what's going on. As of today, what's written above about Gemini is true. Gemini is NIH, and it's definitely not a picture of stability. Despite the entire "ethos" of the project, it manages to project a worse sense of its own dependability, right from the beginning, than the Web does. Given all the bad stuff that can be said about the Web, that's saying a lot. Here's what you can't say about the Web or Gemini: that it's "Becoming a tool which 'just works' and can be depended on without a second thought". But the reason you can't say that about the Web? Because that's what the Web already is. There is no "becoming" involved. This is unlike Gemini, for which there is also no "becoming", but that's because that would imply there's a possibility that Gemini will ever get there, of being anything more than the computational equivalent of a fidget spinner that it is. Here's the best you can say about Gemini, even if you're predisposed to look at it with unmerited optimism:

Hey, folks. Step up and build your world around the opinions and whims of a bunch of people who showed up yesterday and decided to make something new because it felt like a good way experience self-fulfilment at the time. It's not the Web, because, you know--because of bloat. And it's important to say "no". Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Sounds good, too. So we're gonna go with that. And it's not Gopher, either, because... well, just because. But pay no attention to that! Gemini is the product of brilliant programmers who think the right way and are totally committed to dependability.