Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!netcom!ergo
From: ergo@netcom.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: PKZIP 1.10 availability
Keywords: PKZIP
Message-ID: <13525@netcom.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jun 90 15:32:47 GMT
References: <6780@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>
Organization: UESPA
Lines: 37

In <6780@amelia.nas.nasa.gov> roelofs@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Ender Wiggin) writes:

>In article <878@stsim.ocs.com> glenn@stsim.ocs.com (glenn ford) writes:

>> They also did not test using LHARC which is public domain
>>and comes with complete source code AND has better compression than pkzip
>>in *most* cases. It's as usual. People doing these "benchmarks" are
>>way behind on whats going on.


>LHARC, btw, is NOT public domain, at least as of the last version I saw; the
>Unix version is copyrighted by Yooichi Tagawa, and I'm pretty sure the PC
>version is as well.  It is free, however.
Bear in mind that Glenn, like most people, thinks "public domain" means
"software the author doesn't expect you to pay for."  Since definitions
in the end comes from usage, that'll probably be the standard definition
before long.  In any case, I've long since given up correcting people
on this point.

To anticipate all the people who'll correct *me*:  some free software *is*
public domain, but the terms aren't synonymous.  Public domain means
lacking copyright or other legal protection.  People who give away software
often copyright it, to prevent others from selling it or providing
versions with unauthorized changes, or to protect future commercial versions,
or their exclusive right to publish the source code in a book, and so on.
At least that's the legal definition; as I said, usage always has
the final say in the end.
>  And it's been my experience that
>PKZIP almost always manages better compression, although the actual archive
>may end up larger (especially if it contains many small files) due to the
>greater amount of overhead PKZIP stores (pathnames, comments, you-name-it).
>The two programs are generally within a few percent of each other, though.
I know a sysop who (just after the ZIP/ARC wars) went to LHARC because of
that few percent.  (He has nearly a gigabyte of files, so even a small
savings was worth it to him.)  But he finally switched to ZIP because, I
gather, he needed more support than he could get from a non-commercial
product.