I discovered Gemini years ago and was completely enchanted by the whole concept. There are two main buzz kills though.

1. The TLS requirement really undercuts the idea of using Gemini for whatever you want. I know how to set up certificates and run DNS but it's too much infrastructure. I've seen the rationale and don't find it realistic.

2. The barriers to entry are so high that only hardcore tech enthusiasts survive the journey. I don't dislike the people on there but they ran out of stuff to teach me pretty quickly.

Due to these two things I find Gemini very self contradictory in it's goals. Is it serious or just for fun? Is it meant for everybody or for a small covenant of nerds?

In the end I was unable to find any value in Gemini, however I'm still very interested in the gmi format and gempub ebooks. It's my opinion that unlike web pages, ebooks actually DO need to be rescued in the style of Gemini. The creator of gempub gives a very good rationale of what problems ebooks have and why gmi is much more condusive to a comfortable and consistent reading experience than html and css.

https://codeberg.org/oppenlab/gempub

From what I can tell I'm the only person on earth who gives a rat's ass about this (even more than the dev possibly) so I would really appreciate people checking this out.