NanoZip features a relatively small decompressor, nz_w32c.sfx, which I guess could be used to at least somewhat easily reverse engineer/disassemble NanoZip compression format which obviously won't be enough to write an encoder but will shed light on how it works in general.
Is it feasible? Is it legal? Is it worthwhile? I haven't heard of any patents filed by its inventor, Sami Runsas.
I'm asking because NanoZip still heavily beats both 7zip/WinRAR/FreeArc (Next) in compression ratios while providing relatively fast decompression unlike state-of-the-art compression algorithms which are extremely excruciatingly slow.
If course, I won't ever do that 'cause I'm not even a programmer, let alone a low level assembler pro.
Thoughts?