Why did the .7z format become popular?

Question

Data archiving

Hello!
Decided to do a little research but can't find enough information.
How did the 7zip archiver become popular along with zip and rar?
And in general, if someone can share information regarding the history or secrets of the success of these archivers, I will be very grateful.
Thank you!

Answer 1

7z is free. 7-Zip is a file archiver with the high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, WIM, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR , RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR, Z. Total: any company can install 7z instead of buying hundreds of copies of WinRar. Well, under Linux, tar.gz can do everything.

Answer 2

Try interviewing directly at sourceforge.net/u/ipavlov/profile
Everyone will be interested.

Answer 3

And where did it all start? I mean who were the first major consumers, what industries became popular or what type of files (multimedia) became especially popular for archiving them? Maybe some resources especially accepted it with a bang?

Answer 4

I think that in addition to supporting a sufficient number of supported popular formats, the program with an open license played into the hands.