WMA support (was: Re: Ape tags, includes and portability)

[Lukáš Lalinský]

mETz wrote:
> Btw, few days ago I got another request to add WMA-support to my binaries.
> What's the problem with adding the code from libtunepimp to taglib? I just
> added it here and it compiles and seems to work on linux (no windows test
> yet). Is the format itself copyrighted or something?

The ASF file format is patented (US 6,041,345), and the official specification
prevents you from distributing an open-source implementation. There is a
reverse-engineered specification, but thanks to the patent it's illegal. But
since this code doesn't allow any transcoding and in fact promotes ASF, I can't
see why would MS want to stop it.