Editing Gopher (protocol) (section)

===Decline===
The [[World Wide Web]] was in its infancy in 1991, and Gopher services quickly became established.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Gregersen |first1=Erik |last2=Featherly |first2=Kevin |date=2016-05-11 |title=ARPANET |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/ARPANET |access-date=2023-05-03 |publisher=[[Encyclopedia Britannica]] |language=en}}</ref> By the late 1990s, Gopher had ceased expanding. Several factors contributed to Gopher's stagnation:

* In February 1993, the [[University of Minnesota]] announced that it would charge licensing fees for the use of its implementation of the Gopher server.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.funet.fi/pub/vms/networking/gopher/gopher-software-licensing-policy.ancient |title=Subject: University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy |publisher=Funet.fi |access-date=2015-08-12}}</ref><ref name="gopher_protocol_rise_and_fall"/> Users became concerned that fees might also be charged for independent implementations.<ref>{{cite newsgroup|author=JQ Johnson |url=https://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1mj6cb$6gm@pith.uoregon.edu |title=gopher licensing |date=25 February 1993 |access-date=27 July 2011 |newsgroup=comp.infosystems.gopher}}</ref><ref>{{cite newsgroup|author=Joel Rubin |url=https://groups.google.com/groups?selm=36e4c2f1.10244576@nntp.best.ix.netcom.com |title=CW from the VOA server page |newsgroup=rec.radio.shortwave |date=3 March 1999 |access-date=27 July 2011}}</ref> Gopher expansion stagnated, to the advantage of the World Wide Web, to which [[CERN]] disclaimed ownership.<ref>{{cite book |title=Hacking Capitalism: The Free and Open Source Software Movement |url=https://archive.org/details/hackingcapitalis00sder_520 |url-access=limited |author=Johan Söderberg |year=2007 |publisher=Routledge |page=[https://archive.org/details/hackingcapitalis00sder_520/page/n33 25] |isbn=978-0-415-95543-0}}</ref> In September 2000, the University of Minnesota re-licensed its Gopher software under the [[GNU General Public License]].<ref>{{cite newsgroup|url=https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.infosystems.gopher/4A-LS_A6qtA/nT89yWKzzsIJ |title=UMN Gopher(d) released under the GPL!|date=Sep 1, 2000 |newsgroup=comp.infosystems.gopher|access-date=2015-08-12}}</ref>
* Gopher client functionality was quickly duplicated by the early [[Mosaic (web browser)|Mosaic]] web browser, which subsumed its protocol.
* Gopher has a more rigid structure than the free-form HyperText Markup Language ([[HTML]]) of the Web. Every Gopher document has a defined format and type, and the typical user navigates through a single server-defined menu system to get to a particular document. This can be quite different from the way a user finds documents on the Web.
* Failure to follow the open systems model and bad publicity in comparison to the World Wide Web<ref>{{cite web|url=https://ils.unc.edu/callee/gopherpaper.htm |title=Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share |author=Christopher (Cal) Lee |date=23 April 1999}}</ref>

Gopher remains in active use by its enthusiasts, and there have been attempts to revive Gopher on modern platforms and mobile devices. One attempt is The Overbite Project,<ref name="floodgap1"/> which hosts various browser extensions and modern clients.