> The entire OS was built around these source files.

And how did that work out for them?

This seems like one of the many cases where unix won out by being a lowest common denominator. Every platform can handle plain text.

Not all platforms come with powerful text handling tools out of the box - or at least they didn't used to until Unix-based systems forced them to catch up.

> This seems like one of the many cases where unix won out by being a lowest common denominator.

The lowest common denominator rather is binary blobs. :-)

The conversion of which to text and back has historically proven rather fraught.