I think you'll need a more sterling critique than 'why would you wnat to tie this to a file format', to the most successful open source media technology of all

I think you'll need a more sterling critique than 'why would you wnat to tie this to a file format', to the most successful open source media technology of all time. Aside - yes there are or were legal issues with the fraunhofer patents for MP3, but these weren't enough to stop the LAME project and expired in 2017. The combination of MP3 and RSS should be studied as quite likely the most popular open format ever. They've kept podcasting out of the hands of wannabe privatisers from spotify to apple for twenty years.