There are downsides which most young fellas around here don't really appreciate. Hands up, how many of you remember bzip? Not bz2, but bzip, the original one, m

There are downsides which most young fellas around here don't really appreciate. Hands up, how many of you remember bzip? Not bz2, but bzip, the original one, mostly seen as "version 0.21"? Well, at the time it was released, people were making much the same arguments (with kittens). It compressed so much better than gzip, no reason to use the obsolete gzip format and tools, etc. And some of us jumped on the hype bandwagon and started recompressing our data, only to find out afterwards that bzip2 is now the new thing and the format is not only obsolete, but also patent-encumbered and in general needs to be phased out. From a long-term perspective I'm fine with gzip. At least I know that I'll be able to open my data in 10 years time, which is not the case with bzip-0.21. The jury is still out on "xz", in my opinion.