In a move that I feel is outright ironic, Ubuntu is dropping PowerPC support from their next version. Considering it’s merely a matter of time before Apple releases a version of OS X that’s Intel only, I always expected that Linux developers would step into the void, helping to keep the machines relevant long after Apple essentially declares them obsolete. Clearly I was wrong.
Beginning with Ubuntu 7.04, the PowerPC edition of Ubuntu will be reclassified as unofficial. The PowerPC software itself and supporting infrastructure will continue to be available, and supported by a community team.
This is not to say that there will no longer be a PowerPC version, nor that people won’t be performing bugfixes on the release. However, it means that you can’t go to Ubuntu and ask for help. They’ll just stare for a while, blink, and then walk away. Until they change their mind, you can find the PowerPC team at their own site.
This is not all that surprising. It is just one company, and then, not even that really -- as you say, the binaries and such will still be there. That level of development and support is what Linux has thrived on for decades. It is the business model on top of it that is relatively new; and one can only expect them to be much more fickle. Fortunately, by virtue of what they host, their works can live beyond their charter.
More respected and functionally distributed distributions, such as Debian, will be supporting PPC for years to come. They still support the m68k, for goodness sake.