Didier Kryn <kryn@???> wrote:

> Therefore it means IBM doesn't care anymore in PowerPc arch ... That's what I fear, actually.

I don't think it means that. It's clear that PowerPC is stuck as a niche architecture. The only way out of that is to get lots of people using it - and making it freely available is one way towards that. You only need to look at a few examples to see that :

USB vs FireWire. Firewire was very significantly better in many respects than USB, but it was expensive to implement because Apple were greedy over royalties. The inferior USB was really cheap to implement and took over.

ARM. They licensed it widely for modest amounts, and it's been widely implemented instead of other architectures.

For IBM, it could be a shrewd move to get more people using the platform, and thus boost it's popularity, and thus boost both the availability of hardware and choice of software to run on it. The Intel approach is to try and have all of the cake; this could be a move to make the cake much bigger, and thus make a slice of it bigger.
IFF it works, they'll significantly expand the PowerPC market - and while they'll have a smaller share of it, they'll actually make more money.