this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024

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Android still doesn't support many compression types (self.android)

submitted 5 months ago by ByteMe to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When w11 announced that they were adding native support for rar, 7z, etc, it occurred to me that android also doesn't support these and I found it really weird

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[–] 9point6 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I think a big part of it for RAR specifically is that it's a proprietary format that would technically require Google to license it, and for the tiny percentage of users that would benefit, they don't bother.

A seemingly random but relevant example is the Japanese travel card situation with Pixel phones—every pixel on the planet has the necessary hardware to support Japanese travel cards since the pixel 6, however only pixel phones bought in Japan can use the feature (locked by the OS) because it would mean Google would have to pay a per-device cost worldwide.

This is kinda a similar situation I'd bet, they've proven they would rather not include the feature than pay for licensing

[–] woelkchen 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think a big part of it for RAR specifically is that it’s a proprietary format that would technically require Google to license it

Unrar is free enough.

[–] 9point6 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

And there's not really any money to be made charging licenses to open source projects—see ffmpeg/vlc

Google including it in android though means they can charge licenses as a per unit fee because, basically, Google (or phone manufacturers) is a company with money.

[–] woelkchen 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Google including it in android though means they can charge licenses as a per unit fee because, basically, Google (or phone manufacturers) is a company with money.

What? This has literally nothing to do with unrar's license terms.

[–] 9point6 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We're talking about Android, unrar doesn't have anything to do with this really.

RAR is and will continue to be a proprietary format with an owner who can seek royalties.

It's like saying Google should stop licensing MPEG because ffmpeg exists—it simply doesn't work like that

[–] woelkchen 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

We’re talking about Android, unrar doesn’t have anything to do with this really.

The entire topic is about RAR archive support on Android, so of course the freely available source code of unrar, released by the RAR developer himself, has absolutely to do with everything here.

RAR is and will continue to be a proprietary format with an owner who can seek royalties.

Nope, unrar's source code is free, released by RAR's developer.

It’s like saying Google should stop licensing MPEG because ffmpeg exists—it simply doesn’t work like that

Nope, it absolutely isn't like that. You just have no clue at all.

   Unrar source may be used in any software to handle RAR archives
   without limitations free of charge, but cannot be used to re-create
   the RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary. Distribution
   of modified Unrar source in separate form or as a part of other
   software is permitted, provided that it is clearly stated in
   the documentation and source comments that the code may not be used
   to develop a RAR (WinRAR) compatible archiver.

It's not FOSS, given that it comes with the provision that no RAR compressor can be created based on unrar source code but for browsing and extracting RAR archives, the unrar source code as is is absolutely fine.

[–] 9point6 2 points 5 months ago

Ah fair play, I didn't realise unrar was from the same guy, cheers for the extra context.

So I guess we go back to what else it could be:

The licence could still be an issue as it's not FOSS and parts of android are, so I guess that could prevent its inclusion if it's incompatible with existing licences
The licence could also be an issue in terms of wanting feature parity with zip support, which would include creation of archives.
As I mentioned before, the percentage of users who are interacting with non-zip archives locally on their devices is a pretty small percentage. It may be on the backlog, but it's not going to be far from the bottom in priority.
How many of the use cases are not served by the third party app ecosystem sufficiently that it would benefit inclusion in the actual OS and the extra maintenance that would entail
RAR is an outdated format and in decline at this point, there are better options to add before getting to it
Let's also address the elephant in the room regarding the last point—I don't think I've seen RARs used regularly outside of piracy in quite some time. If that's the main use case, Google is not going to be bothered about supporting it.

There's probably other reasons I've not thought of, but just a couple of the above are enough to explain it IMO