Why 7‑Zip Beats WinRAR: License, Features, and Compression Ratio Explained
The article explains that 7‑Zip is an open‑source compression program released under GNU LGPL (with AES under BSD and unRAR under dual licenses), highlights its key features, compares its compression ratios to WinRAR using Firefox and Google Earth files, and provides the GitHub repository link.
License
7‑Zip is released under multiple open‑source licenses. The core code is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The AES encryption implementation is under the BSD license. The unRAR module is dual‑licensed under LGPL and the proprietary unRAR license. These licenses permit free use, modification, and distribution, including commercial use, without requiring payment.
Main Features
High compression ratio, especially with the native 7z format.
Support for a wide range of archive formats (7z, zip, tar, gzip, bzip2, etc.).
AES‑256 encryption for secure archives.
Ability to create self‑extracting executables.
Compression‑Ratio Evaluation
A comparative test was performed between 7‑Zip and WinRAR 5.20 using two large Windows applications as source data: the fully installed Mozilla Firefox 34.0.5 and Google Earth 6.2.2.6613.
Test procedure:
Install the applications on a Windows system.
Compress the installation directories with 7‑Zip using the 7z format (default LZMA2 compression) and with the ZIP format (deflate).
Compress the same data with WinRAR 5.20 using its default settings.
Record the resulting archive sizes and compute the reduction relative to the original data.
Results:
7‑Zip 7z archives reduced the original size by approximately 30 %–70 %.
7‑Zip‑generated ZIP archives were 2 %–10 % smaller than ZIP files produced by most other compressors, including WinRAR.
Project Repository
The source code, issue tracker, and binary releases are hosted on GitHub:
https://github.com/sparanoid/7zSigned-in readers can open the original source through BestHub's protected redirect.
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