[$] The push to save Itanium
It is (relatively) easy to add code to the kernel; it tends to be muchharder to remove that code later. The most recent example of this dynamiccan be seen in the story of the ia64 ("Itanium") architecture, support forwhich was removed during the 6.7 merge window. That removal has left asmall group of dedicated ia64 users unhappy and clinging to a faint hopethat this support could return in a year's time.