The timing is a bit unexpected, given that there was a similar discussion not too long ago, and I think someone stepped up as a quasi-maintainer (maybe even Adrian, who now acked the removal patch).
Itanium will be remember for quite a while because it gave us the Itanium C++ ABI: https://itanium-cxx-abi.github.io/cxx-abi/ It's actively maintained and continuously adjusted to new implementation requirements for newer C++ standards versions.
Despite the name, it's the C++ ABI that GNU/Linux (and most non-Windows targets) uses for other CPUs as well. I know that people don't like this kind of ABI stability (or C++), but it's what enables widespread C++ usage in distributions, without the need for flag days/mass rebuilds or tons of manually created compat packages. We might not have Qt or KDE without the Itanium C++ ABI.
> Itanium will be remember for quite a while because it gave us the Itanium C++ ABI
There are two other things Itanium gave us, which will also be remembered for a long time: EFI (rebranded as UEFI for its portable non-Itanium implementation), and GPT (the partition table format for disks bigger than 2TB).
Itanium will be remember for quite a while because it gave us the Itanium C++ ABI: https://itanium-cxx-abi.github.io/cxx-abi/ It's actively maintained and continuously adjusted to new implementation requirements for newer C++ standards versions.
Despite the name, it's the C++ ABI that GNU/Linux (and most non-Windows targets) uses for other CPUs as well. I know that people don't like this kind of ABI stability (or C++), but it's what enables widespread C++ usage in distributions, without the need for flag days/mass rebuilds or tons of manually created compat packages. We might not have Qt or KDE without the Itanium C++ ABI.