As Patrick said, if he had gotten a 1000-byte file and sent a 999-byte file/decompressor file back, nobody would have counted the inode data as a part of the solution. Why count it now?

Because the solution specifically was for 1 file submitted, 2 files back (compressed and decompressor). This topic ise the next level trolling that went on. The summary and ng faw, explained why these file metagames aren't useful. They obscure the lack of a compression strategy (eg if the inode equivalent was 2ft of tape) by nature of dispersing information into the fs.