The need for coderpunks

[s1113645@tesla.cc.uottawa.ca]

On Thu, 25 Apr 1996, Mike Duvos wrote:

> Given the various parameters which determine the life and death
> of mailing lists, I fully expect Coderpunks to become moribund
> within six months, and its members to reunify with this list.
> 
> Very few of these "I'm going to start my own list with less
> noise" adventures ever make it long term, absent the
> personalities and critical mass of interesting information which
> drove the list they spun off from.

In this case, I hope not. There are people (not myself) who only want 
the coding-related material arriving in their mailboxes. Coderpunks 
serves that need. I think that particular list is more of a filter than a 
separate list. If you look at the archives (if they come back up) you'll
see a few crypto bigwigs on coderpunks that haven't seen fit to post to 
cypherpunks in a very long time, if ever. It'd be nice to keep 
receiving their input without forcing them into tedious killfiling measures.
Conversely, I don't see why the activists should have to deal with code.

The main list, imho, has mostly become something of a watering hole for 
the primary crypto user community. Something quite different from the usenet 
crypto groups.

And since the list is very active regardless of signal, it will still be 
a place to send out some signal on those occasions where the important 
thngs occur. They don't (and can't) every day. And usenet just doesn't 
perform this function properly. 

I really do think having archives alongside a cypherpunks archive is crucial
for the survival of an offshoot list. Institutional memory is very 
useful, especially for time-insensitive things like technical discussions.
If hks decides not to bring back the archives, I hope they tell us promptly
and temporarily put the whole thing up for ftp so someone else can 
provide this valuable service. (Kudos to hks and Todd for having given to us 
up till now.)

It's safe for you to unsubscribe now, Perry.