[gopher] Strategy: end of Gopher in Mozilla

[Cameron Kaiser <spectre@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Brandon Eich has spoken on 388195 and has stated that gopher will disappear
in Mozilla 2, which means Firefox 3 will be the final version with gopher
support. (And what a jerk he is. Wow. Did you read his comments on SOAP?)
This is a crushing blow.

At this point strategy needs to be discussed to have a workable, deployable
modern client in place for when FF 3 becomes EOLed in a couple years.

As I see it, we have two options:

- FF add-on. This has the advantages of integration, but we have to play
in their sandbox, including dumbing down features that don't work well in
a browser environment. However, a lot of work is done for us, and it is
cross-platform. We would need someone/ a team with good knowledge of how
to do this.

- Separate application. Either via Mozilla Prism or Adobe AIR, or even a
cross-platform system like RealBASIC, as far as I'm concerned they'd still
have to download something, but at least this way it's a product custom
scoped for Gopher and can do things in a Gopher-like way. Downside is
reinventing the UI wheel, but that may not be completely bad.

- Custom clients for various deployments. This means mastery on a particular
platform, but may be limiting due to fractured development cycles.

As far as I'm concerned, with pulling Gopher out of core, there is no
reason not to take our ball and play elsewhere, i.e., create a next-gen
Gopher client and leave Firefox/Mozilla out of the equation. However, I
can see advantages to either way, and neither option is exclusive.

-- 
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser@xxxxxxxxxxxx
-- In the end, everything is alright. -- Sarah Goldfarb, "Requiem for a Dream"