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Red Hat Abandons Sparc
Mike Dubreuil writes: "When I went to download Red Hat Linux 7.0 for Sparc I was disappointed to learn RH is dropping support for the sparc processor line. They are claiming that there is a low demand for sparc versions This may be a major blow to the Linux community because Red Hat is the top vendor for commercial copies of Linux. Not to mention that they have the support in place to handle what large companies demand."
Update: 10/02 09:43 PM by CT : Bernhard Rosenkraenz wrote in to say "It is true that we will probably not release Red Hat Linux 7.0 for
sparc. However, this does NOT mean there won't be a Red Hat Linux 7.1 or
7.2 for sparc.
If, at some time, we decide to discontinue
commercial sparc support, we will turn Red Hat Linux for
sparc into a community effort."
The article's subject should be "Red Hat Linux 7.0 possibly won't be released for sparc".
The sparc machines are still part of our build system, and we won't just drop it off.
If we ever decide to discontinue sparc support commercially, the sparc port will be turned into a community effort.
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You can't blame Red Hat for not giving back to the community, because they do. They pay Alan Cox, Stephen C. Tweedie and Ingo Molnar to hack the kernel (probably more people too), they funded a lot of early work on Gnome, they bought Cygnus and freed Source Navigator, not to mention that they release all the software they as part of their distribution as free software. These are just a few of the things Red Hat has done for the community.
Claiming they don't give free stuff back to the community is ridiculous. Though personally I prefer Debian to the Red Hat distribution, I am grateful for all the things that Red Hat has done for all of us.