I really want to like the MNT Reform and especially the MNT Pocket Reform - but it’s really hard to justify such a big perf delta with my M1 MBP.

With it being modular there's always the potential for CPU upgrades in the future. But yes, it's much less performant than a modern x86 or Apple Silicon device. Performance isn't the primary goal, though admittedly it would be nice.

This will of course never happen but imagine if there were an M1 CPU module for it.

Qualcomm is maybe more realistic but from what I've heard it seems like they won't even talk to you if you're not ordering in huge quantities.

Unless they become bankrupt and no new modules will be released. It's hard to place faith in the future of a company like that, especially when I need a powerful CPU right now.

Granted - the hardware is open so it doesn’t have to be the original manufacturer coming up with new CPU modules.

This substitute manufacturer has to be financially motivated to do so, i.e. there should be enough potential customers

It's interesting you say that, since that's one of the major benefits of open hardware - you're not beholden to the survival of a corporation to continue having support for your tech. Anyone can come along and get a PCB produced by one of the many "print on demand" services. Someone with similar skills to the team at MNT can pick up the entire ecosystem and build entirely new hardware for it without a shred of friction or red tape (or threat of lawyers lol) ... pretty badass if you ask me. Worst case scenario you hire/crowdsource someone to build an updated CPU module.