The future of 32-bit Linux

I don't imagine that it's really possible to blame this problem on any one piece of software, or even any one category of software. The simple and uncomfortable reality is that newer hardware is more lucrative to support, so that is what people and businesses choose to spend their time and effort on supporting. This is not a technical problem, and will not admit a technical solution.

Even more bluntly: If you want support for hardware X, you can support it yourself* or hire someone to support it for you. If X happens to be popular, you might receive support for free, but this is a gift and not an entitlement.

* There are complications if we're talking about closed hardware, but I'm mostly talking about general-purpose computing devices. IMHO closed hardware should have a minimum support period codified into law, but I have no idea how such a law might be written. It would need to provide a precise legal definition of "support," and I just don't see how you would go about defining such a thing. And then you have issues of "I modded it and now their new firmware update broke everything," which is a whole other can of worms... IMHO you get to keep both pieces if that happens, but others will disagree with me.