From: gtoal@an-teallach.com (Graham Toal)
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 93 04:59:33 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Politics on the List?
Message-ID: <7323@an-teallach.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In article <199311120422.UAA28483@mail.netcom.com> tcmay@netcom.com writes:
 > Of course, I notice that very few of us are writing any code these
 > days. Some of the remailer wizards are still revising their code, and
 > a few C-punks are trying to implement DC-Nets in code. But the vast
 > majority of the 500+ folks on this List are either not writing crypto
 > code, or are keeping silent about it.
 
 Just FYI, I'm working on integrating pgp to the mailer
 that comes with 386bsd.  I hacked it first a long time
 ago, and never gave it out because it had a lot of loose
 ends - now I'm tidying them up so that I can give it out
 and people won't have to be careful what they type to avoid
 some of the misfeatures...
 
 > The intent of the "Cypherpunks write code" line, if I can venture a
 > motivation (it was of course Eric's line), is that we are more
 > interested in seeing the Brave New Crypto World happen than in just
 > jawboning about export laws, the Zimmmermann case, and whether
 > libertarians are right and socialists are wrong.

 The intent of 'Cypherpunks write code' is that Perry can dump on
 people talking about anything other than code ;-)  (When we *do* talk
 about practical stuff he tells us its impractical or been done
 before or pointless, or that we should stop *talk*ing about it
 and go away and do it...)  I'm surprised we bother running a list
 at all actually.  We should all be locked away in our garrets
 hacking I guess.

 (What I'm really saying is that this list clearly serves a purpose,
 and it is evolving into its own character, whatever that may be, despite
 the efforts of the early founder members to keep it on some tightly
 defined track that they once conceived it as.  I don't see this
 evolution as being a problem, and I'm slightly (though not to
 Detweilerian proportions) annoyed whenever people like Tim or Perry
 pull rank and try to limit the topics of discussion, when on closer
 inspection they're just as bad as the rest of us at drifting 'off topic'.)

G