To answer the OP, yes, there are many alternative derivations of the Lorentz Transformations, some of which do not assume the constancy of the speed of light. I'll just list a few that don't assume the constancy of the speed of light:
Y.P.Terletskii, "Paradoxes in the Theory of Relativity"...
I think "silence" is too strong a word, since for example, I found 16 citations to Guthrie and Napier's 1996 paper, "Redshift periodicity in the Local Supercluster":
http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/bib_query?1996A&A...310..353G
The newest work I could find on this is:
"The...
Students will do bad physics whether or not we use the concept of relativistic mass. It's called not studying hard enough or last-night cramming. I just don't care about those "students". A student who understands time dilation, length contraction and the "twin paradox" will have no problems...
What mess? You mean the "mess" that students who cram the night before exams find themselves in? No physicist or conscientious physics student finds themselves in a "mess" because some books choose to present the "relativistic mass" formulation. I think it's valuable for the serious student to...
But that's just it: it's a convention. There's no correct way to go about it. There has been a long debate about this in the American Journal of Physics and Physics Today, and nothing has been settled, except that you can do physics either way; invariant mass or relativistic mass, it doesn't...