While you are technically correct, nowadays the executable file size is minuscule compared to the available memory. Since upx uses the UCL algorithm which requi

While you are technically correct, nowadays the executable file size is minuscule compared to the available memory. Since upx uses the UCL algorithm which requires no additional memory besides the target buffer AFAIK, the memory increase can only be attributed to the original file size---I think rclone weighs about 20 MBs, so it is probably the case that rclone unusually consumes less memory! :p The real problem with upx is the invocation latency, which is a big blocker when your program starts a lot (common for CLIs). Executable compression has been much more common in Windows because the download size matters there and programs tend to last much longer.