Tarred and Feathered?

A few days ago, the below message came into one of the perl.org support queues. I had to share it:

I dowloaded (sic) a file from this site. It had something like "tar" at the end of the file name, like an extention (sic). It must be some sort of compression--I don't know. I have nothing that recognizes this ext. If you're going to compress your files, why not use the "zip" format like everyone else on the planet? What benefit is there to using some unheard of compression system that people have to jump through hoops of flaming fuel oil to use?

(For the non technical readers, "tar" or tape archive is an archive format popular on UNIX. For all intents and purposes, its just like "zip", but 10 or 20 years older, and still in wide use. A quick google search for tar file would have told him all this.)