I downloaded Gnome Videos from Flathub, because Fedora repo does not include the non free codecs, and despite being developed by GNOME is it is now marked in Fedora gnome-software as “Stopped receiving updates”, which to my understanding it means it is using outdated runtimes and this is a security risk.
I picked Gnome Videos over others because being the maintainer the Gnome Project I though they would update their software with the latest runtime to make it more secure but I see this is not the case. Is there anything I can do to pick packages that down the road will be less likely to be marked as “Stopped receiving updates”?
The Fedora repo of this package is in the same situation. “This app is no longer receiving updates, including security fixes”
I am easily able to use videos with all the codecs by installing the libavcodec-freeworld package from rpmfusion. I also use ffmpeg so ran dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing to remove the codec limited version from fedora and install the full version from rpmfusion.
I finally ran dnf upgrade @multimedia --allowerasing to ensure that everything supports full multimedia performance and that I have all the available codecs installed.
The actual video players I use are vlc and mpv and I have no issues with codecs. Everything is available in rpm from either fedora or rpmfusion.
Every package out there has the potential to stop receiving updates if the developer/maintainer decides to drop it and no one else picks up the ball.
Share your love and encourage the developer to continue developing the package and it is more likely to continue receiving updates for some time.
I am on Fedora Atomic there is no dnf but it does not matter because Gnome Videos in Fedora repo is marked as outdated too, it would not solve the problem.
What you’re referring to as GNOME Videos is the former default GNOME video player known by the project name of Totem, app id org.gnome.Totem.
Note that GNOME replaced this legacy GTK app with Showtime in GNOME 49, I suggest using the latter one. You can search for it in GNOME Software, or install it from the command line with flatpak install flathub org.gnome.Showtime.
You are right, I didn’t know about this, it appears that Totem/GNOME Videos was superseded because it is hard to maintain due to a messy codebase. This explains why it no longer receives updates, I am proceeding to replace it with ShowTime, getting it from Flathub to make sure the non-free codecs are included.
That certainly is one option but flatpaks have their own issues.
All the necessary codecs to function with most rpm based packages are available by installing libavcodec-freeworld from rpmfusion, and/or replacing ffmpeg-free from fedora with ffmpeg from rpmfusion.
Given that the OP is on Fedora Atomic (Silverblue), they would need to layer the RPMFusion multimedia packages as RPMs on top of the base install. And while this is possible, it would only have effect on multimedia apps installed as RPMs (so either Firefox from the base image, in case not replaced, or other video player apps layered with rpm-ostree), but not on Flatpaks (the preferred way to install GUI apps on atomic desktops).
Before retiring, I worked with a large scientific system built around a long list of libraries and targeting POSIX platforms (originally Fortran 77 on IRIX64, and ported to Fortran 90 RHEL, Ubuntu, and macOS) along some R, Java, and Python programs. The original package used the SLATEC Fortran 77 library along with a number of C and C++ libraries. Thegsl library was created to replace SLATEC for F90. The most common reasons for packages being discontinued were a) appearance of a “new improved” package, often by the same developers or bFedora provided early warning of discontinued packages.) integration of the capabilities into a large library like gsl. In one case an R package disappeared from repositories. I contacted the author’s PhD supervisor, who told me the author had finished his PhD and at last report was driving a taxi. One R package that used a “no-longer maintained” library just embedded the source in the R package.
Using Fedora for development often provided early warning of discontinued packages. After upgrading I would check for packages that were still from a previous Fedora version and begin the search for replacements.