This means the use of the internet File Transfer Protocol without authentication. FTP is defined in RFC 959 which includes material from many previous RFCs. Directories are browsed as hypertext. This in turn refers to the standard RFC 822 which defines the format of internet mail messages. News articles make good examples of hypertext, as articles contain references to other articles and news groups.
News groups appear like directories, but more informative.
Therefore, it is now included in every WWW client, so that the Gopher world can be browsed as part of the Web. Gopher menus are easily mapped onto hypertext links. It may be that future versions of the Gopher and HTTP protocols will converge. WAIS is a variant of the z39.50 protocol.