This is a valid point, and one that hampered (and still hampers) Linux from becoming a major desktop driver.
25 yrs of Packman is about the expiration time of patents in many countries. So when Packman started mp3 was patent encumbered, like most video codecs and open formats like ogg or flac were niche products that almost nobody used.
Discrete GPUs were a luxury and the AMD ones required a tailored Mesa to decode video. Hence in those days the “switch to Packman” was the only option if you wanted to use your PC to play almost any multimedia.
Then the mp3 patent expired, FLAC quality music became more common and Google devised and published free (variants of the OGG) codecs for their music services.
Then Google devised and published free video codecs for their YouTube services and the then default mp4 became generally available thanks to Cisco offering openh264 to the public free of charge.
Meanwhile the early AMD GPUs that needed the tailored Mesa began collecting dust in the basements and Mesa was removed from Packman-Essentials.
And so a couple of years ago most multimedia could be played on a license-free system and somebody began advising that the “full switch to Packman” was not really needed by most general purpose users.
About a year ago Flatpaks (and Appimages and whatever) began being available to the general user, so real alternatives to Packman (or to AUR or whatever for other distros) were available and those began being advised in the support channels.
Last July the last mpeg4video patents (divx, vidx) expired, so today most multimedia formats in general use can be played without patent restrictions.
That is basically why Packman is less relevant today than it was 25 years ago.
So who needs Packman (or alternatives) today?
- The streamers (a few basic coders are still patent-encumbered)
- The watchers of videos from broadcasters that use HEVC coding (used in Digital Terrestrial Television, not by YouTube) or from some well known paid streaming services
- Users of iPhones (their .heic images use HEVC coding)
- Users of some niche formats, the most relevant for the coming years being likely VVC/h266, the successor to HEVC, or those used in Blue-Ray videos.
Be aware that most recent GPUs include decoders and sometimes even coders for some of the restricted standards, so the affected audience is going to shrink as time passes.
Hope this helps to set some context about what is really at stake with the discontinuation of Packman.
[Sorry for the long post. Sorry for using some (too many?) abbreviations. Please don’t be nitpicking with the technical details, this is a layman’s abstract, not a technical digest]