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Don't Use RAR

group.miletic.net

11–20 of 218 posts

Re: Don't Use RAR

#11
The sightly better file compression with rar is still interesting. But I suppose with today's compute when you think about the time vs space trade-off, time is more important. Space is cheap.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#13

> 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, exc…

It looks like newer versions of unrar aren't open source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrar

Re: Don't Use RAR

#14
There was a time when RAR was extremely popular because it dealt very well with splitting things across multiple diskette-sized archives, and because it edged out PKZIP in compression.

Regardless of its origins and... "traditional" use, these days it has zero relevance given that Windows and MacOS (as well as some Linux file managers) allow you to handle zip files without any additional software - and also because many file formats have evolved to support built-in compression.

I do find it extremely annoying, though, when I have to help someone rifle through old backups and need to expand a RAR archive, or when someone (for whatever reason) decides to package downloads in that way (the last culprit I remember was a Chinese company who packaged their MCU tooling that way).

Re: Don't Use RAR

#16

> 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, exc…

Depends on where you live. It's not enforceable in my country according to a lawyer I consulted but it probably is enforceable in the USA. This "you agree not to exercise your rights" pattern is essentially standard legal boilerplate at this point and it boggles my mind that people can get away with it.

It inevitably results in the corporation retaining all possible rights and privileges while the consumers own nothing, can do nothing and can have whatever little they have taken away from them if they don't behave.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#18
post #7

Quoted post unavailable.

and?

Everyone is using nginx and that was made by a Russian, does that mean we should stop using it?

This is why 'guilt by association' doesn't work with your 'point'.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#19
This is pretty light on substance, essentially it and the post it points to says: it’s not a free license and there are better alternatives.

The post it links to saying they don’t want people to use free commercial software seems odd, I’m not sure I get it. The author thinks people won’t buy his software because WinRAR’s trial doesn’t expire?

Re: Don't Use RAR

#20
post #14

There was a time when RAR was extremely popular because it dealt very well with splitting things across multiple diskette-sized archives, and because it edged out PKZIP in compression. Regardless of its origins and... "traditional" use, these days it has zero relevance given that Windows and MacOS (as well as some Linux file managers) allow you to handle zip files without any additional software - and also because ma…

Mail servers still have restriction on attachment size. RAR is the most convenient way in this situation.
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