Is there any archive format that offers the following: be digitally sign-able with a digital certificate from a trusted source like Verisign - for preventing changes to the file (I am not referring to read only, but in case the file was changed it should no longer be signed telling the user this is not the original file) be stream-able - be able to be opened even if not all of the content has been transfered (also not strictly linearly) be "readable" - be able to read the data without extracting to a temporary folder (AFAIK if you open a file in a zip archive it is extracted first, and this stays true even for zip based formats like OOXML. This is not what I want) be portable - support on at least Windows, Linux and Mac OS X is a must, or at least future support be free of patents - Be open source - also preferably a license that allows commercial use(as far as i know GPL a share-alike licence so it doesn't allow comercial use, BSD on the other hand alows it) Note: Though it may come in handy eventually I can not think right now of a scenario that would require both point 1 and point 2 simultaneously. Or lets leave it a be able to check the signature only when the whole file was downloaded. I am not interested in: being able to be compressed being supported on legacy systems Does any existing archive format fit this description (tar evolutions like DAR and pax come to mind) ? If there is, are there programing libraries available for the above mentioned OSs? If not, would it be hard to create such a thing? EDIT: clarrified piont 5 EDIT 2: added a note to clarify point 1 and 2 P.S.: This is my first question on StackOverflow