Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!umd5!brl-adm!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!manes
From: manes@dasys1.UUCP (Steve Manes)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: SEA files against pkarc author
Message-ID: <4924@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jun 88 08:21:33 GMT
References: <5763@megaron.arizona.edu> <1024@bcd-dyn.UUCP>
Reply-To: manes@dasys1.UUCP (Steve Manes)
Organization: Datamerica Systems, NYC
Lines: 27

In article <1024@bcd-dyn.UUCP> sas@bcd-dyn.UUCP (432 2370.00) writes:
>In article <5763@megaron.arizona.edu>, gudeman@arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
>Actually, I believe that SEA's principals are serious about this.  Having met
>Thom Henderson, I can say that my opinion of him is that this kind of action 
>is right up his alley.  It doesn't surprise me in the least, since he seems
>to think that ARC is unique, and that everyone else who clones ARC is just
>ripping him off, despite any added performance or new features they may have
>added to his implementation.  

Which is exactly why this lawsuit seems so bizarre to me.  I've worked
with Thom and found him very gracious and friendly.  He spent a couple of
weeks helping me on an abortive effort to get SEAdog installed in Magpie.
I also ran a large dedicated discussion on file archivers on my BBS and had
all these guys (Thom, Phil, Rahul and Dean Cooper, with a Vern Buerg
lurking) calling in regularly, often nightly.  I always got the impression
from Thom that he didn't take ARC very seriously, except insofar as he was
the first to produce a popular file compressor for micros.  He and Phil
never crossed words on the compression method, which after all, neither of
them developed.  The only contention seemed to be PKARC's use of the .ARC
extension for Squashed files that wouldn't uncompress under S.E.A.'s ARC.
And I agree with that complaint.  Phil should have used something like .PKA
for Squashed files to avoid confusing everyone.

-- 
+-----
+ Steve Manes
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