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There are open source WMA codecs out there.
Actually, there are patents associated with WMA, AAC, and MP3. Any of the patent owners could potentially prevent us from using those formats, but we're using existing open source implementations of each, and nobody has yet tried to prevent these open source implementations. As well, the likely worst that could happen is that we would be required to remove the codecs from our software, as the people who licensed it to us (IE, the people who wrote the previous open source implementation that we adapted) improperly licensed it to us.
At least, that's my general understanding. I am not a lawyer, nor am I even close to being experienced in this sort of stuff even in general, but this is my sorta-understanding of the situation.
The only codecs that are basically 100% safe are the ones designed from scratch as open source and patent free (for example Ogg, FLAC, and wavpack).
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