ffmpeg: Free Software's WMA decoder

mmu_man writes "This morning, after the usual spams, I got this from the ffmpeg-devel mailing list: Here it is, something we waited for long. Now we have a FreeSoftware (LGPL) WMA (Windows Media Audio) decoder. WMA is the highly proprietary audio codec M$ is pushing along with its user-locking tools like DRM. this will free us from the ugly DLL hacks required to play DivX until now. Note there isn't any encoder yet, but who would like to encode into WMA while we have better and more open solutions? With this new codec, ffmpeg really proves itself as the most complete audio/video grabbing, convertion and streaming solution, for Linux, but also FreeBSD, Windows and even BeOS. Note ffmpeg codecs are used in a lot of other FreeSoftware projects, like mplayer."

Comments

How long...

[GeckoFood]

WMA is the highly proprietary audio codec M$ is pushing...

How long before M$ decides to file a suit against the developers of such to get their code locked down and buried? Bets, anyone?

For How long?

[nurb432]

Is this licensed from Microsoft? If not they can pull this as being a violation of several things. Though id imagine they will wait until more people use it, so its harder to switch to another format, thus moving a few more towards Windows solutions.