I've been a professional software developer for over twenty years and writing software since I was a kid in the late 80s. I understand why it's hard supporting

I've been a professional software developer for over twenty years and writing software since I was a kid in the late 80s. I understand why it's hard supporting old platforms. The source code is worthless. It's just one way a company could extend support for older platforms they've given up on supporting. It's not valuable for them to hold on to the sources. We could all huddle around the existing Unices and BSDs and try to keep the forks going for older platforms. That's fine too. But the original sources may have hints about how to support some of the custom hardware for a given platform that would be useful, etc. It really wouldn't be hard for them to just say, "Okay, here's the source for the last build 12.x.x known to run on hardware revision 1.x.x," and leave it at that. Doesn't cost anyone anything. Update: What's trickier perhaps is supporting older platforms through emulation and only having binaries. Just open the source, Luke.