1. Gopher is an almost irrelevant protocol today, but it was very popular in the early 1990s. Gopher is simply a hierarchical menu of hyperlinks. This means that like HTTP/HTML, you can build virtual sites containing documents from other sites. However, unlike HTTP/HTML, the only structure is that of a hierarchical menu: it doesn't support hyperlinking within the documents that it points to. Key point: There are still a lot of Gopher servers out there, However, since they are no longer mainstream, they are rarely maintained by security people. Therefore, they often present a way to compromise the network. From Hacking-Lexicon

2. In UNIX based systems linked to the Internet, a menu-based progam that helps you find files, programs, definitions, and other resources on topics you specify. Gopher was originally developed at the University of Minessota and nameeed after the school mascot. Unlike FTP and Archie, Gopher doesn't require you to know and use details of host, directory, and file names, Instead, you browse though menus and press Enter when you find something interseting. You usually see another menu, with more options, until finally you seect an option that displays information. You can then read the infromation or save it to your disk storage area after retreiving it with anonymous FTP. The World Wide Web (WWW) has begun to make Gopher and other text-based Internet search tools obsolete. From QUECID

3. Invented at the University of Minnesota in 1993 just before the Web, gopher was a widely successful method of making menus of material available over the Internet. Gopher was designed to be much easier to use than FTP, while still using a text-only interface. Gopher is a Client and Server style program, which requires that the user have a Gopher Client program. Although Gopher spread rapidly across the globe in only a couple of years, it has been largely supplanted by Hypertext, also known as WWW (World Wide Web). There are still thousands of Gopher Servers on the Internet and we can expect they will remain for a while. From Matisse

4. Distributed Hypertext Client, Gopher protocol This package contains the client for the distributed global directory and hypertext system known as gopher. This is a text-based (ncurses) client from the University of Minnesota. It also supports the gopher+ protocol, as well as links to ftp, http, and other external viewers. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

5. n. A type of Internet service first floated around 1991 and obsolesced around 1995 by the World Wide Web. Gopher presents a menuing interface to a tree or graph of links; the links can be to documents, runnable programs, or other gopher menus arbitrarily far across the net. Some claim that the gopher software, which was originally developed at the University of Minnesota, was named after the Minnesota Gophers (a sports team). Others claim the word derives from American slang `gofer' (from "go for", dialectal "go fer"), one whose job is to run and fetch things. Finally, observe that gophers dig long tunnels, and the idea of tunneling through the net to find information was a defining metaphor for the developers. Probably all three things were true, but with the first two coming first and the gopher-tunnel metaphor serendipitously adding flavor and impetus to the project as it developed out of its concept stage. From Jargon Dictionary