It is one thing to make an OS support the hardware and run on a "weird" piece of hardware. But the removed code in OpenSSL is about making it compile and run on systems on which the standard (defacto or specified) APIs do not exist or do not behave like they should, and which have broken compilers that need workarounds. All of these add conditional code paths that won't get the amount of testing they need, and which will only hinder developers when they try to understand and improve the surrounding code.

Also, the $20k was for the power bill. Yes, there are some older systems among the powered ones. But there's more, there's really a rack full of hardware running the infrastructure that makes OpenBSD available to us. There's networking gear, there's AC...

Dobbsbob makes a good point too. The weird hardware OpenBSD runs on helps find bugs; the untested code paths in OpenSSL add bugs.

Those ancient platforms/architectures run OpenBSD, though, not the original OS. Nobody in their right mind should run those dead OSes on the public internet; why bother supporting them in the latest OpenSSL release?

I think they asked for $20k for old hardware (like vax), not old platforms (like VMS).