Phil Katz, the creator of the
popular ZIP compression format and PKWARE, died at the age of 37 on
April 14, 2000. He is the creator of the ZIP file format, the most popular
compression format used today. So popular that even those of you
who may be unfamiliar with it have used it without even knowing
it. The programs that create and manage ZIP files, like WinZIP,
perhaps the most popular program on the planet, would not be around
if it was not for Phil Katz.
Back in the late 80's, there was a company called System Enhancement
Associates (SEA) that developed a compression format called ARC and
files that were compressed using this method had an extension of
ARC. It was the popular compression format at the time.
Phil Katz found out a way to improve the ARC compression method
and compress files faster and smaller. He created PKARC to compress
files and PKXARC to uncompress them. Quickly, users started to
adopt Phil's new programs. In a single year more sysops converted
to Phil's program rather than SEA's. However, SEA claimed that Phil
was using SEA's technology and that he could not use the ARC
file extension, so they sued him. Phil realized that he could not
support a major lawsuit against SEA and decided to change his
code and work on his own compression scheme. He renamed his
programs to PKPAK and PKUNPAK, also changing the compressed file
extension to PAK.
A few months later, PKZIP was released and that was it. It was a
huge success; the new format was faster and created smaller
compressed files. Sysops dropped almost every other compression
type and went with ZIP. The ARC wars were over, and Phil Katz was
the clear winner. PKWARE, Inc. was formed and has been in
business ever since, and although SEA is still around, they
certainly are not as popular or as strong. You can still find SEA's
ARC.EXE on some bulletin boards, but you'll have to look very
hard.
PKWare
Info-zip
Azertech's Zip Files Page
Contains an expanded history and resource links
Other Compression
gzip
