nuisance music format

[LumenLux]

I have cautioned and I have been cautioned about .wma files for use in PTE. Maybe someone can explain a couple of aspects that will make my yesterday stumble worthwhile.

I needed to record some voice input for a show. As a matter of convenience, I opened the most readily available recorder on the PC at hand. The recorder was in Windows Movie Maker. Thinking I could easily convert the files to mp3, I recorded 19 segments. The voice person left, I opened the sound editor present on the machine to edit and convert to mp3. Uh uh. The message from the edit software lamented that because the original format was .wma, the edited sound clip could only be saved now as .wma! Fortunately, I was able to send the files to another computer where my usual sound editor was able to edit and save as wav or mp3 files.

I would like to know:

1. Can windows movie maker be set so the original sound files are not restricted that way?

2. Was the first software maker legally compelled to not save as mp3 or would that software maker have to pay Microsoft for the privlege? I really don't get it - yet.

3. If Microsoft wants to popularize .wma why do they make life so difficult to use their format? (I don't really expect a "good" answer on this one.)