Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!SIMTEL20.ARPA!W8SDZ From: W8SDZ@SIMTEL20.ARPA (Keith Petersen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Phil Katz (PKARC author) sued by SEA (ARC author) Message-ID: Date: 19 Jun 88 05:47:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 43 > From: boneill@hawk.ulowell.edu (SoftXc Coordinator) > Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc > Re: Phil Katz (PKARC author) sued by SEA (ARC author) > > I don't believe Phil Katz did (or could) use the source code to > SEA's ARC. I corresponded some time ago with Vern Buerg, the > author of ARC, about the source code to ARC 5.21, hoping to Vernon is the author of ARCE, ARCA, and ARCV - not ARC. > create a UNIX port. He told me that almost all the code was in > MASM, which would not be easily portable. He did, however, point Vernon's ARCA is written in MASM, as is ARCE and ARCV. SEA's ARC is written in C, which is why it's so slow. > me to Phil Katz, whose PK[X]ARC programs were written in C. PKARC and PKXARC are written partly in C and partly in MASM (which is how Phil gets the speed). The C-language source code for ARC521 is distributed on many BBS systems. I'm told it was made available by SEA. See PD1:ARC521SR.ARC on SIMTEL20. I have never seen any release of source code from Vernon Buerg of his ARCA program. Too bad, too, as it could serve as a guide for writing fast machine language versions for almost any operating system. Oh for the old days of CP/M where everyone shared their ideas by providing source code with *no* copyrights. I learned a lot from reading Ward Christensen's source code. His work laid the groundwork for MSDOS. In any case, I believe that SEA will wish they never opened this can of worms. Their copyright is probably invalid since SEA's ARC includes the copyrighted works of other authors (LZW and Greenlaw). See their DOC file, in the credits section. --Keith Petersen Maintainer of the CP/M and MSDOS archives at SIMTEL20.ARPA [26.0.0.74] Arpa: W8SDZ@SIMTEL20.ARPA Uucp: {decwrl,harvard,lll-crg,ucbvax,uunet,uw-beaver}!simtel20.arpa!w8sdz