On Self-extracting archives

Microsoft is still favoring self-extracting archives over normal archives. They probably want to sustain the antivirus software market by providing files capable of containing computer viruses and not having a sandbox to run these files by default in their badly designed "operating" systems.

Microsoft goes over to extremes like having a self-extracting EXE file that contains a CAB file that contains a ZIP file that contains the actual files (see for example Microsoft KB 303436 where they distribute such a file) (maybe they are so clueless that they think developers do not know what a ZIP file is and how to unpack it)

One way to prevent Microsoft incompetence (or maybe corruption) is to have in proper operating system never execute EXE files outside a sandbox and by default detect self-extracting archives (by file contents inspection instead of just only the file extension) and unpack them directly by the installed unarchiving software.

Why compatibility with Microsoft may lead to legal problems

Microsoft sued TomTom (Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims) for patents like 5,579,517 and 5,758,352: "Common name space for long and short filenames". When TomTom was just using the badly designed FAT from Microsoft for compatibility with Microsoft products. TomTom (like other flash storage users) could just have used a decent flash filesystem like YAFFS. This is just another example why software patents lead to fragmenting compatibility between systems.