What's the plan for powerpc64 in FreeBSD 16

Greetings,

As we're getting close to the release date for FreeBSD 15.0, it's time to
take stock of another architectures. This time, I'd like your feedback on
the following plans.

We'd like to retire powerpc64 and powerpc64le just before the FreeBSD
stable/16 branch.

This would give powerpc64 another two years of support in main, followed by
sustaining support on stable/14 and stable/15 until the end of those
branches.

We've come to this point because the port is dwindling and we have a cost
associated with keeping it around. The number of developers has fallen off
so only a couple remain. Issues in powerpc are taking longer and longer to
discover and resolve. The hardware has been a huge source of frustration
for clusteradmin and we've no alternative for developers. There's only a
tiny user base. We have trouble building packages for it. Also, powerpc has
a number of interesting features of the architecture that make it the odd
arch out.

It's also big endian. While that may seem like a reason to keep it around,
if we really can't support it and we're not actively testing functionality
of the system, then keeping this around actually doesn't help keep us
honest. It just gives us a burden we must bear.

In my opinion, powerpc64 appears to have already fallen below critical
mass, despite being a sentimental favorite for a number of FreeBSD
developers. As such, I'd like us to consider planning to retire it before
we branch 16.

My questions today: Are you using this port? How many people are using it?
And what's the installed base? It appears to be somewhat less than that of
either i386 or armv7 based on user surveys and popularity at conferences.
Also, any other comments you might have.

Warner