[mdellabitta]

Just a datapoint: Macs have been sending files via the Internet with resource forks for a long time, basically since the invention of the Macintosh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BinHex

Resource forks are basically legacy from the original MacOS, and something that's being retained for compatibility, not something that's really a current design. The current replacement of resource forks is bundles, where a directory masquerades as a file in the GUI.

There are lots of reasons to hate on HFS+, but I wouldn't consider this the most important one.