After finding that the official unofficial way of getting mesa-nonfree (nonfree.eu) now requires to move the entire system to unstable, I’m wondering again why this separation is even going on.
I’m just trying to understand. Correct me if you think I’m wrong:
mesa-nonfree including the proprietary codecs are publicly available for download
mesa-nonfree including the proprietary codecs are open source
Redistributing the source code or built binaries of the proprietary codecs is not allowed due to the licensing of these codecs
mesa-nonfree is not distributed through the official Manjaro repos because of the licensing
Distributing a script (be it Bash or PKGBUILD) that downloads and builds mesa-nonfree including the proprietary codecs would be perfectly legal
It would be trivial to legally add official support for these proprietary codecs to Manjaro using a script for an experienced developer.
Why is there so much push-back on such a highly requested feature?
The nonfree repo builds using Arch Linux PKGBUILD and Manjaro unstable repo - thus the separation as compatibility with testing and stable is not a viable option for the few members providing this.
I never said it is the official way, but it is the number one recommended way to get those proprietary codecs here on the forums and appears to be maintained by Manjaro developers.
I have searched the forum and have read through numerous threads, but it’s completely pointless as the threads that actually contain useful information have been deleted or unlisted and the remaining ones just say “this has been discussed soo many times already…”. The fact that you just linked two private threads that are not publicly available just further proves my point.
I know about the PKGBUILD on mesa-freeworld/mesa-nonfree and it’s great that it even exists to begin with, but as I said it is not well maintained at all and I doubt that this will change until it becomes part of the official distribution.
What does that even mean? It’s the same PKGBUILD as the Arch one, sans epoch.
And as you were told numerous times already this won’t happen apparently. You can however install Arch or any other arch-based distro and you’ll have it.
That means it is not well tested and now even stable and testing have been dropped. A well maintained package would at least be available for the stable branch.
I understand you believe that.
But I would like to understand why the people behind Manjaro aren’t prioritizing this. The reasons that I have read (mainly licensing/patent/copyright issues) completely fall apart if you think outside the box of distributing proprietary codecs directly.
There already is a party that is publicly distributing everything we need under https://archive.mesa3d.org/ . So all we need to do is add a “mesa-onfree downloader/builder” package to Manjaro. That’s it.
How is it not well tested? Do you understand that everyone using Arch and any other arch based distro is using same mesa PKGBUILD? You don’t know what you’re talking about.
That is perhaps your erroneous definition. No one is stopping you using it on stable, just don’t update it outside of stable updates.
They removed codecs intentionally. What do you expect they’ll prioritize?
This is just source files – same as PKGBUILD is using – which needs to be compiled. So again, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
It is not well tested in conjunction with Manjaro. I had to do some major roll-backs just because of this package. (And those major issues are probably why unstable and testing were dropped.) That never happened to me with official Manjaro packages.
Yeah, great let’s make it even less stable than it was to begin with.
Of course they did, but now we are in a problematic situation that should be solved. Users are requesting support for the proprietary codecs.
Oh really, they need to be compiled as in “built”? Did it occur to you that this was why I suggested a downloader/builder package? Seems like you are the one who doesn’t know what he is talking about or can you actually answer my question?
Dude, what are you even talking about? Perhaps you should understand how things work first.
And what exactly is that? You have PKGBUILD which you can build in probably 5 minutes. You won’t get a compiled package from Manjaro, how many times does this need to be said?