I think the point this article is making is that the portability was a sham and a mirage from the get go. Yes, it might compile on an oddball architecture, but

I think the point this article is making is that the portability was a sham and a mirage from the get go. Yes, it might compile on an oddball architecture, but a lot of that would be the autotools build system and the C compiler fudging around important details that could easily leave you with something that kinda-sorta runs but is a wide open security flaw. Or that runs for a while and then breaks in ways nobody could have predicted because you aren't meant to try to run cryptographic software on something out of the museum of historical computing.