In my mind this highlights something I've been thinking about, the differences between FOSS influenced by corporate needs vs FOSS driven by the hacker community.

FOSS driven by hackers is about increasing and maintaining support (old and new hardware, languages etc..) while FOSS influenced by corporate needs is about standardizing around 'blessed' platforms like is happening in Linux distributions with adoption of Rust (architectures unsupported by Rust lose support).

> while FOSS influenced by corporate needs is about standardizing around 'blessed' platforms like is happening in Linux distributions with adoption of Rust

Rust's target tier support policies aren't based on "corporate needs". They're based, primarily, on having people willing to do the work to support the target on an ongoing basis, and provide the logistics needed to make sure it works.

The main difference, I would say, is that many projects essentially provide the equivalent of Rust's "tier 3" ("the code is there, it might even work") without documenting it as such.

The big difference is that Algol 68 is set in stone. This is what allows a single dedicated person to write the initial code and for it to keep working essentially forever with only minor changes. The Rust frontend will inevitably become obsolete without active development.

Algol 68 isn’t any more useful than obsolete Rust, however.

It's funny, I have a different view. Corporates often need LT maintenance and support for weird old systems. The majority of global programming community often chases shiny new trends in their personal tinkering.

However I think there's the retro-computing, and other hobby niches that align with your hacker view. And certainly there's a bunch of corp enthusiasm for standardizing shiny things.

You nailed it. I am in the process in my spare time to maintain old Win32 apps, that corporates and always-the-latest-and-greatest crowd has abandoned.

Most people don't care about our history, only what is shiny.

It is sad!