The “internal struggle” was actually related to the rest and (hopefully) sorted out the other issues.
The tl;dr is that Manjaro was setup as a company with one owner who often didn’t do what he was supposed to and no one else had access to do it. This caused issues like the SSL stuff but also other things. Obviously this made quite some volunteers leave over time, but as the distro itself is actually quite nice also a bunch didn’t want to give up that easily. Those pretty much gave that one person the choice to transfer the distro to a new to-be-made non-profit (leaving only the commercial activities in the company) or they would leave (and likely fork it or something). He agreed and they’re now in the legal process of setting up the non-profit, where important things will not be in the hands of a single person.
So all with all it was a bit messy, but it seems they got it sorted out now. That should also prevent issues like they’ve seen in the past. So with that I wouldn’t recommend against the distro. I still have it on some secundairy systems, where my main one (I need to say this naturally) got switched to run Arch (btw).
You can read more here: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-2-0-manifesto/186171
Outside of what Hamsda said (to which I’ve added some context), the thing with Manjaro is also that it’s target is easy usage which attracts beginners. Now that isn’t bad per se (it was my first distro too, and I still run it on some machines. I’m not a hater) but it does become a thing when those people go to Arch-related spaces (like the Arch forum or the AUR comment section) asking Arch-people for help.
For one, Manjaro isn’t Arch. It may be based on it, but it also has it’s differences. It’s better to ask on the Manjaro forums. Why some Manjaro users go bother the Arch forums I never understood. The Manjaro forum is very helpful, quick to react, and more appropiate. No reason to divert really…
And secondary, Arch is a distro aimed at more advanced users and has a “know the basics, read the documentation, understand it, and try stuff yourself. And if you thén still don’t know you can ask”. Since Manjaro attracts beginners, the questions they ask are often not only about a different distro, but on the level Arch expects you to be able to figure it out yourself making it rather a nuicance (after all, they’re asking beginner questions in a space for advanced users). Manjaro users doing that somewhat regularily gave it a bad reputation.