Don't Use RAR

I've only seen the use of .rar in scene related materials. And even there it's not used as frequently anymore.

This is conflating archive format with compression algorithm.

The very broad statement "7-Zip achieves a better compression ratio, but it is much slower to compress than RAR" should be demonstrated over all compression levels with a curve of compression-ratio vs time. I am skeptical RAR cannot be outperformed by 7zip in at least some situations.

The license is the strongest argument to not use RAR.

> There is an unofficial unrar that is free and open-source software, but there is no free and open-source rar as creating one is prohibited by the RAR license.

From the license (EULA), I assume this is the relevant part:

> You may not use, copy, emulate, clone, rent, lease, sell, modify, decompile, disassemble, otherwise reverse engineer, or transfer the licensed software, or any subset of the licensed software, except as provided for in this agreement. Any such unauthorized use shall result in immediate and automatic termination of this license and may result in criminal and/or civil prosecution.

> Neither RAR binary code, WinRAR binary code, UnRAR source or UnRAR binary code may be used or reverse engineered to re-create the RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary, without written permission.

> The software may be using components developed and/or copyrighted by third parties. Please read "Acknowledgments" help file topic for WinRAR or acknow.txt text file for other RAR versions for details.

Is this actually enforceable? If yes, are there worse outcomes apart from revoking the license? And I mean, the open source unrar, which is supposedly fine, doesn't come with an EULA like this. So it's probably not binding for reverse engineering based on the open source unrar.

edit: I mean if there is a separate patent, then it's a different issue.

The rar license prohibits writing a compatible compressor? What kind of nonsense is that? I clicked the license link and there is a scary looking anti-reverse-engineering clause, but 1) that sounds legally dubious given how the program is distributed; and 2) there is a FOSS decompressor, and studying that may be sufficient to write a compressor without examining the non-free official compressor.

The article is right that there's not much good reason to use rar these days. It is still popular in some communities though. So I've had occasion to run the decompressor, though not the compressor as far as I can remember.