Interesting idea, but...

I agree, an undocumented format for critical data is insane. It is like bringing everything wrong with black-box-proprietary-binary-goo, fall-over-and-die-on-the-slightest-change software to Linux for no good reason.

Who cares if the file format changes? A good format ought to be extensible so that existing readers do not break. And if tools do process the format directly instead of relying on a library as they should, then naturally it is their responsibility to keep up with it.

There are tools that can and do process raw filesystem data, and we don't use that as an excuse for trying to hide the format in a black hole, or to never change it in any substantial respect either.

What if someone wants to write a different library that accesses the same data, possibly in a different language, after the fact, many years later, on a different operating system? Is the log data just supposed to be some sort of impenetrable format that is good for nothing without a compiled version of the original tools? Suggesting that people _reverse engineer_ it is laughably absurd. All the extra cost, repeated multiple times over, without the benefit of actual compatibility - all the bugs, weaknesses, and oversights of the original source base, if that.