It seems like Manjaro will continueAfter several distribution problems, the ultimatum in the form of a manifesto From the collaborators and a few tense days, the same team member who published that thread has let us know that we are heading towards the least bad solution: in short, there will be no fork or forkA new non-profit company will be created, and the new eV will coexist with the GmbH & Co. KG that they presented more than six years ago.
It still needs to be implemented, but the talks haven't been hostile. According to Aragorn, they're already moving forward with the creation of the eV, an acronym for «registered association« which in German means «Registered Association«. It's a very common legal structure in Germany (and in German-speaking countries like Austria and Switzerland) for non-profit organizations. For many, it's what it should always have been.
Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG and Manjaro eV will coexist
«Given Philip's very positive response tonight, it would seem we won't be forking the distribution — thankfully, because that would have been a lot of work and would have been very bad for the community.
Therefore, we will now move forward with the creation of the eV and then seek to restructure everything so that Manjaro's old problems can be avoided from now on and both Manjaro distribution and Manjaro GmbH benefit from this new collaboration«.
As we explained, this is the least bad outcome, and users shouldn't notice anything. On the contrary: this will allow Manjaro to remain as it is now, that is, Arch-based, but more stable (in its Stable branch) by holding back some packages for a while, and it will also resolve the problems that have given the distribution a bad reputation, such as the SSL certificate issue.
The thread also touched on other issues, such as the fact that, according to a team member, Valve initially considered developing SteamOS based on Manjaro, but decided to stick with Arch to avoid problems. It's also possible they will resume or accelerate development of the immutable and Gaming, which would initially use the OrangePi Neo.
So we users can rest easy; it seems Manjaro is here to stay. And what's more, it's better than in recent years.