Doesn't matter was it real Satoshi that said it or is it a fake, the idea itself (let nodes to charge for their services) is IMO very important.
Does anybody work on it?
If you put block processing (not mining) back into clients, they will get transaction fees and be paid and incentivised for supporting the network.
I was quite disappointed to read that Satoshi envisioned huge centralised farms and users just being users paying fees. That means the end game is a cartel of infrastructure rich companies - back to square one for the proles.