> - Change both platforms to "mipsel" and "mipseb".  Less desirable because of
>   the existing "mips" releases.

I like this one. IMHO, `uname -m` compatibility is not so important.
Consistent naming scheme is more important than it for me.
"mips" implies both "mipsel" and "mipseb", so if "mips" == "mipsle",
it confuses users.

This is my personal opinion, of course.

BTW,
NEWS-OS 4 doesn't have uname command.
NEWS-OS 6's `uname -m` returns model name (e.g. "news3800", "news5000").
NEWS-OS only runs on mipseb, so perhaps NEWS-OS's developers didn't need
to distinguish "mipsel" and "mipseb" on their `uname -m` output.

P.S.
not NeWS-OS, but NEWS-OS :-)
--
soda