Bug#1005899: mplayer: should not release with bookworm

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

This bug came to my attention as a user of mplayer, due to the testing
autoremoval which is the consequence of an RC bug.

I tried Sebastian Ramacher's suggested alternative of `mpv` and,
speaking entirely personally, it would do OK for me as a replacement
for mplayer.  It seems to have many of the same advantages over other
programs (eg vlc), for me.

But:

I have to say that I found the original report in this bug rather
unfriendly in tone.  Removing things is usually regrettable - at the
very least, there will usually be people who are going to be upset.
And an RC bug like this has very high visibility and will draw the
attention of people without much of the context.

A message which was kinder about mplayer, and which more positively
spoke of the advantages of mpv, would have avoided darkening my day
today.


I had a look at the bug list in Debian and it doesn't seem to have
insuperable problems.  I'm not able to commit substantial amounts of
time but I wouldn't want this package to fall out of Debian just
because no-one with the appropriate permissions is available to
support people who want to do the actual maintenance.  So I hereby
volunteer to sponsor uploads.

It seems to me that at #1004579 (ffmpeg 5.0) and #939032 (giflib)
would need to be addressed, and #958865 (crash on theora) really ought
to be fixed too.  If we had a maintainer who is able to deal with
those, and also deal with some of the outstanding bug gardening, then
we could conclude that mplayer ought to stay.

Thanks,
Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.  

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