> I could just write my own mp3 decoder easily (the format not the file type) but I'm not gonna risk my company getting sued into the ground by doing that.
I am confused.
> The MP3 format is now patent-free and requires no licensing fees to distribute or use. Fraunhofer IIS and Technicolor officially terminated their MP3 licensing programs, with all core patents having expired. Anyone can encode, decode, and distribute MP3 files or software without paying royalties.
Sorry I was painting a broad image. I'm also worried about copyright infringement, discovery, someone switching to a different different that requires glpl, etc
You raise a good point. You can substitute "MP3" with any patent-/copyright-/license-laden important media codec and you will face the same issues. Your comment would be very timely in the year 2005, when MP3 licensing was a serious issue for game devs.