Xref: utzoo trial.misc.legal.software:31 gnu.misc.discuss:1445 Path: utzoo!telly!attcan!uunet!ns-mx!umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu!williams From: williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (Kent Williams) Newsgroups: trial.misc.legal.software,gnu.misc.discuss Subject: Re: LZW and shareware wars Message-ID: <2052@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> Date: 7 Aug 90 14:43:37 GMT References: <1990Jul31.220935.1424@riacs.edu> <26BDD1B6.242B@marob.masa.com> Sender: news@ns-mx.uiowa.edu Reply-To: williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu.UUCP (Kent Williams) Followup-To: trial.misc.legal.software Organization: U of Iowa, Iowa City, IA Lines: 43 In article <26BDD1B6.242B@marob.masa.com> cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan) writes: >In article , > jim@baroque.Stanford.EDU (James Helman) writes: >>After Terry Welch wrote an easily understandable article for IEEE >>Computer in 1984, lots of people started writing LZW compression >>programs. One of them was Tom Henderson, who developed a shareware > >Minor nit: Henderson's name is Thom not Tom. >Disclaimers: I sympathize with Henderson, and this bias will be evident >in what follows. However, I have no connection with Henderson or his >company, Systems Enhancement Associates, except as satisfied customer. > MAJOR NIT: I wrote the lzw compression program that Thom Henderson originally used in ARC, and he adapted it with my permission. Not only that, I sent him a copy of the Unix compress source, which he also adapted for use in ARC. There are actually four variants of LZW compress supported by ARC. 1) The code I originally sent him. 2) The same code with a quicker hash function 3) 12-bit Unix compress and 4) 13-bit unix compress. I am credited in the documentation for ARC, though my contribution isn't described. I haven't talked to Thom for a few years. I basically sympathized with PKWARE on the suit issue, but Thom always went to great pains to make sure everyone knew that he held ARC as his property. PKWARE started to make a lot of money off of something Henderson never put in the public domain. SEA and Henderson have been widely villified in the PC community -- I think unfairly. He provided a valuable utility at the right time, RELEASED COMPLETE SOURCES, and just asked for voluntary payment. I don't see how anyone -- even Philip Kearn (sp?) -- could complain too much about the way things were settled. He was goaded into writing PKZIP, which is a much superior program. -- Kent Williams 'Look, I can understand "teenage mutant ninja williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu turtles", but I can't understand "mutually williams@herky.cs.uiowa.edu recursive inline functions".' - Paul Chisholm