Coderpunks is a membership-only list, with a list.cop who approves membership and who expels those who post inappropriate material. Cypherpunks is an open list, with no one ever having been expelled.
I'm sort of surprised that no one besides Tim seems to be bothered by coderpunks. The idea of a cliquish technical elite developing crypto code out of the public eye isn't very cyberpunkish. But at the same time, we ought to keep a couple of things in mind. First of all, the problem that coderpunks was organized to solve is a real one -- cypherpunks takes a lot of time, there's a lot of noise, and it's often frustrating. What's more, the coderpunks list is a lot more open than some of the early rhetoric suggested it would be. Making the list archives available at hks.net is a very positive gesture. There was a post here last week claiming that no one had been denied membership to coderpunks -- that's very different from the policy advocated in some early coderpunks posts, which called for allowing new subscriptions by invitation only. Coderpunks seems to be shaping up as a reasonably open list that demands that its members stay on topic. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. I hope the new list catches on, and that it makes it easier for its members to develop new tools. But I'd also like to be able to continue to read it -- I hope that the members will see the value of not closing it off any tighter than necessary to keep their s/n ratio high.