A Gilmore Supporter writes:

You know, I was vaugley offended by John's comments about whiny cypherpunks, until I read this message and realized who he was talking about. John, thank you for your years of service to the cypherpunk community 9such as it is),

John Gilmore's only contribution to Cypherpunks has been to provide a box. I can't even remember the last time he contributed something of interest to the list, and he certainly ranks as one of the least frequent contributors of substance over the years. Any goodwill John might have built up by letting us all use his box has certainly been eradicated over the last few weeks by his takeover of the list, and the series of edicts which followed. Yes, it was nice of John to donate the use of his box, back in the days when he did not feel the urge to exercise unilateral editorial control. But if it hadn't been his box, it would have been someone elses box, and our gratitude towards him shouldn't be so great that we are willing to sit back and let him do major damage to that which "Cypherpunks" is supposed to stand for, lest someone claim we are unappreciative.

and Sandy, thanks for your well-intentioned (but doomed from day one) efforts to take some resopnsibility for our current mess. It's too bad things had to end in such a pissy way, but anyone who wants to dole out blame should realize that in an anarchy, all members are responsible for the maintainence of freedom.

Sandy, unlike Herr Gilmore, has been a major contributor of substance to the list since its inception, and hopefully he will continue to be in the future. The idea that he should moderate the list was of course a silly one, but for reasons which do not reflect badly on him in the least. What Mr. Blatz fails to realize is that the "problem" which certain people tried to solve never really existed. The quality of the Cypherpunks list is determined solely by the amount of signal, not by the amount of noise, unless one is getting ones feed of the list via 1200 baud long distance UUCP. Anyone can create signal by writing about relevant topics, and if you feel signal is lacking in your particular area of interest, feel free to add some. The notion that the list was ever threatened by the humour of Dr. Vulis, or the one line bot-spammed insults about Tim May's heritage, is an absurd one. No one should have had any problem ignoring such material, and only a politically naive fool would buy this as the excuse for the blatant usurpation of the list by Gilmore and crew. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"