[cfarm-users] cfarm110 and cfarm111 decommissioning on February 27

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2026 at 5:38 AM Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Quoting from
> https://blog.yossarian.net/2021/02/28/Weird-architectures-werent-supported-to-begin-with
>
> *Give up on weird ISAs and platforms*
>
> I put this one last because it’s flippant, but it’s maybe the most
> important one: outside of hobbyists playing with weird architectures for
> fun (and accepting the overwhelming likelihood that most projects won’t
> immediately work for them), open source groups should not be
> unconditionally supporting the ecosystem for a large corporation’s hardware
> and/or platforms.
>
> Companies should be paying for this directly: if pyca/cryptography
> actually broke on HPPA or IA-64, then HP or Intel or whoever should be
> forking over money to get it fixed or using their own horde of engineers to
> fix it themselves. No free work for platforms that only corporations are
> using. No, this doesn’t violate the open-source ethos; nothing about OSS
> says that you have to bend over backwards to support a corporate platform
> that you didn’t care about in the first place.
>
>>
So, it looks like the argument from ENOSUCHBLOG is, maintainers of free
software should not work for free (as in cash), instead, a company should
pay for the work.

I like the idea, but I don't think it is a good argument.  It might even be
a strawman.  First, most of the work is already being done at no charge for
other platforms and operating systems.  A port to new hardware is usually
an incremental milestone, not a monumental leap.

Second, most free software developers are not motivated by money. [0,1]

Third, would the project set up the necessary corporate structures to
handle money like contributions and payments to the project and developers?

[0] What motivates open source coders?, <
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2014/12/what-motivates-open-source-coders/>.
[1] What research explains why so many programmers invest time in creating
free libraries?, <
https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4254/what-research-explains-why-so-many-programmers-invest-time-in-creating-free-libr
>.

Jeff
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