This article again? In my opinion, this article is biased. The subtext here is that the author is claiming that his "lzip" format is superior. But xz was not chosen "blindly" as the article claims.
To me, most of the claims are arguable.
To say 3 levels of headers is "unsafe complexity"... I don't agree. Indirection is fundamental to design.
To say padding is "useless"... I don't understand why padding and byte-alignment that is given so much vitriol. Look at how much padding the tar format has. And tar is a good example of how "useless padding" was used to extend the format to support larger files. So this supposed "flaw" has been in tar for dozens of years, with no disastrous effects at all.
The xz decision was not made "blindly". There was thought behind the decision.
And it's pure FUD to say "Xz implementations may choose what subset of the format they support. They may even choose to not support integrity checking at all. Safe interoperability among xz implementations is not guaranteed". You could say this about any software - "oh no, someone might make a bad implementation!" Format fragmentation is essentially a social problem more than a technical problem.
I'll leave it at this for now, but there's more I could write.
To me, most of the claims are arguable.
To say 3 levels of headers is "unsafe complexity"... I don't agree. Indirection is fundamental to design.
To say padding is "useless"... I don't understand why padding and byte-alignment that is given so much vitriol. Look at how much padding the tar format has. And tar is a good example of how "useless padding" was used to extend the format to support larger files. So this supposed "flaw" has been in tar for dozens of years, with no disastrous effects at all.
The xz decision was not made "blindly". There was thought behind the decision.
And it's pure FUD to say "Xz implementations may choose what subset of the format they support. They may even choose to not support integrity checking at all. Safe interoperability among xz implementations is not guaranteed". You could say this about any software - "oh no, someone might make a bad implementation!" Format fragmentation is essentially a social problem more than a technical problem.
I'll leave it at this for now, but there's more I could write.