Maybe I am missing something here. But last time I checked, the empeg with WMA support will still play MP3 files. If you personally are not going to use the WMA feature, the decision to add it won't affect you in any way. The 1.1 upgrade is going to be free, and I am sure that if empeg ever releases an upgrade that they need to charge for, the feature they are needing to charge will be optional.

And even if empeg had to sign a strict contract about WMA, theres no way they could force empeg to take out MP3 support.

And skipping the legality of anything like this, if the contract did allow full control of the empeg once WMA is added, just hold on to a pre-WMA upgrade file.

If WMA becomes dominate, so what? Just like today in the browser war, I am free to use Netscape or Opera in the face of the dominate IE. Sure I don't like how MS got IE to where it is today, but it's also not something I'm forced to use.

In any case, I don't see how adding WMA will in any way harm us as the users, or empeg as a product or company.