Project Gemini

I had a different set of criticisms, such as: mandatory TLS, no file size in the response, no range requests, etc. (I made up my own in order to address these and some others.)

There was (and still is to a degree) a group of people critical of TLS. One half of the group (which I think you belong to) bitch about it being mandatory. The other half bitched about the use of TLS instead of <bespoke encryption system they just read about that is better/easier/smaller than TLS>. TLS was the main point of Gemini.

And about the lack of file size: I proposed a way to sneak it in, and it was rejected outright. Oh well.

You can use the Scorpion protocol that I made up if you want optional TLS and including the file size (and if you don't like the Han unification). You can use Spartan protocol if you want the Gemini file format (with one difference) but a different protocol that does not use TLS (although it is not the same as just Gemini without TLS, but works significantly differently), although if you have any dynamic files then you might need to handle them differently for Spartan than Gemini.