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 <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own. Pronouns: they/he. If I emailed you from @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.