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They do---as an optional extra field. This seems reasonable; it's not even desirable for many archives to include e.g. owner/group information. The zip format has its own odd required metadata (a timestamp in local time!), but for the most part the design of relegating platform-specific metadata to the extra fields seems quite sensible.

         -UNIX Extra Field (0x000d):

          The following is the layout of the Unix "extra" block.
          Note: all fields are stored in Intel low-byte/high-byte 
          order.

          Value       Size          Description
          -----       ----          -----------
  (UNIX)  0x000d      2 bytes       Tag for this "extra" block type
          TSize       2 bytes       Size for the following data block
          Atime       4 bytes       File last access time
          Mtime       4 bytes       File last modification time
          Uid         2 bytes       File user ID
          Gid         2 bytes       File group ID
          (var)       variable      Variable length data field

          The variable length data field will contain file type 
          specific data.  Currently the only values allowed are
          the original "linked to" file names for hard or symbolic 
          links, and the major and minor device node numbers for
          character and block device nodes.  Since device nodes
          cannot be either symbolic or hard links, only one set of
          variable length data is stored.  Link files will have the
          name of the original file stored.  This name is NOT NULL
          terminated.  Its size can be determined by checking TSize -
          12.  Device entries will have eight bytes stored as two 4
          byte entries (in little endian format).  The first entry
          will be the major device number, and the second the minor
          device number.
http://www.pkware.com/documents/APPNOTE/APPNOTE_6.2.0.txt


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