The word of the result of the recent Debian Release Team meeting is that starting with Etch, after the upcoming freeze and release of Sarge as stable, a bunch of smaller architectures are going to be cut out of getting stable releases. For the ordinary user, this is actually probably going to be a good thing; the major architectures (i386, ppc, amd64, ia64) will still be getting stable releases, and at a considerably faster rate, considering the decreased workload on the team.

The less-used architectures will still be supported in unstable, but will be moved to a different section of the Debian website. There'll also be less choices for users when picking packages off the site instead of pulling them off ftp with apt.

Edit: It's actually apparently just a proposal at the moment, though it may go into effect. I'm rescinding my opinion for the time being, given how much of a stir it's created - and the fact that I don't have a lot of experience with the more obscure. Seems that there are quite a few people that like Debian because it supports a lot of obscure and older architectures.

Just noticed that Slashdot's just come out with a story on it too, with lots of Slashdot-esque replies. Will keep an eye on things.

Edit again: Finally got to sorting through some more of my newsfeeds, and a lot of the big guys at Planet Debian aren't too happy about the outcome either. Don't quite think I am either. Sometimes I wish there were more ways that I could help. If only I had more time.