From: sommerfeld@orchard.medford.ma.us (Bill Sommerfeld)
But the vast majority of the 500+ folks on this List are either not writing crypto code, or are keeping silent about it.
There are undoubtedly a fair number of the latter; probably better than 50% of the cypherpunks subscribers I know around here (including myself) get paid to (among other things) work on software related to network security through cryptography.
I've always had problems with the slogan "Cypherpunks write code." It's a cute pun (if it was intended that way), but I think too many cypherpunks are techie-snobs. Writing code is all well and good, even crucial, but there are plenty of other things that can and should be done to further cypherpunk goals. Many many people have found out about cypherpunk developments through sympathetic articles in Wired, the Village Voice, etc. I've done long interviews with Tim May and Phil Zimmerman on my radio show. (And Perry Metzger and I are going to be giving a talk on crypto anarchy here in NYC in January. This is being sponsored by a local anarchist group. More details on this later.) Everything helps. I was moved to invite Tim May to be on my show last year not because of any beautiful code he'd written, but because I was inspired by some of his political/theoretical writing. You don't have to write cypherpunk code to be a cypherpunk. You don't even have to write code at all. There are plenty of other things to do that are just as important and just as exciting. P.S.: I'm not being defensive. I write code for a living, just not cypherpunk code (yet). --Dave.