OpenPOWER Foundation exists since 2013.

SPARC is quite alive for Solaris customers, and there are still plenty of them.

Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that they were there first.

Anyone that thinks basic ISA being open source, will prevent extensions, proprietary boards or boot firmware are fooling themselves.

Sure, it may do for a couple of maker community projects, Arduino style, and that is about it.

> SPARC is quite alive for Solaris customers

Fujitsu has announced plans to transition away from SPARC by 2030. Oracle has laid off their staff, after the M8 in 2017. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC ) If SPARC isn’t dead, then it’s in palliative care, and not far behind Itanium.

Shame because SPARC T series was interesting and I wonder what it would look like today at modern geometries and using chiplets.

May be, it is still being sold, and doesn't have anything to do with the point of being there first.

Again, the Sparc 64Bit that is used today is not open. So not sure why you bring it up.

Being open one point in time doesn't mean it will stay forever like that, point 1.

Point 2, it was there first.

Again, it wasn't there first with open 64 bit.

Only 32 bit was open. And the 64 bit was a major change for Sparc.