According to this subthread, it's that the code is positively ancient: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?

According to this subthread, it's that the code is positively ancient: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056338 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfr... "Like for the past 17+ years... ... I own the ISP hosting UF. The biggest problem is supporting the legacy mod_perl stuff that the site is built on... you'd basically have to re-write the entire front end, or find a very bored perl monk to update the code base. Basically to keep the ARS active, you'd need someone to take over the operations of the server & code. Maintaining it is a big deal. Cost-wise, I could bring it down quite a bit if it was moved into a VPS (which we also offer), but again - it's a maintenance/care & feeding issue. This site is still running on Apache 1.3 here. Someone would need to volunteer some senior technical skill for several weeks, and start... pretty much now."