PPC/PPC64 disabled in Koji for dist-f13

[Bill Nottingham]

Jeff Garzik (jgarzik at pobox.com) said: 
> But you're dodging the larger point -- Fedora has, de facto, demoted
> big endian support in its entirety to a second-hand effort, rather
> than distributed the workload much more widely.  Given M package
> maintainers and N secondary-platform volunteers, it is clear M > N
> by orders of magnitude.

Sure, but it's not like M, in a sizeable percentage of cases, is particularly
useful in this regard.

In any case:

- ppc has very few users. This is demonstratable by smolt stats and
  download stats.
- ppc has declining hardware availability, unless you're counting increased
  scavenging via dumpsters.
- ppc has no one looking at the actual bugs in any case. LiveCDs have
  been broken on PPC for *years*, for example, and no one cares. Graphics
  drivers have been broken on PPC throughout the F11 release and no one
  cares.

In essence, if the bug doesn't affect the build or install environment, it
*doesn't get noticed*, in most regards.

> Given that ppc32 and ppc64 (or pick your BE platform) have
> demonstrated an ability to detect problems not found on LE, it seems
> like this policy change will directly lead to missed bugs, and an
> attendent decline in software quality.

If you feel that this is the case, *step up and join the PPC secondary
arch effort*. They could use the help. But I don't see the logic in making
Fedora a charity case.

As to the RHEL argument, well, that's a RHEL problem. If Red Hat (or anyone,
really) feels that it's worth a significant effort to have an up-to-date,
maintained, PPC tree, then they should pony up for that effort. Saying
"Fedora should do this!" and not providing real resources to accomplish
that; well, I don't think Fedora necessarily should be a charity for cases
there's no community for.

Bill