Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!rutgers!ucsd!nosc!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!SIMTEL20.ARPA!W8SDZ From: W8SDZ@SIMTEL20.ARPA (Keith Petersen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: WAIT-A-MINIT!! Re: Re: Re: Phil Katz (PKARC author) Message-ID: Date: 19 Jun 88 06:27:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 54 > Date: Saturday, 18 June 1988 10:41-MDT > From: mtunx!whuts!whutt!tes@rutgers.edu (STERKEL) > Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc > Re: WAIT-A-MINIT!! Re: Re: Re: Phil Katz (PKARC author) > ..I dropped use of his software for the following reasons: > > 1. No monetary recognition of SEA's intellectual property. Why should there be? SEA's ARC is a ripoff of the Unix compress program, Richard Greenlaw's squeeze/unsqueeze and LZW's copyrighted works. > 2. Phil Katz's arbitrary revision of the SEA standard creating > *.arc files incompatible with other *arc programs. (yes, > I know about the patches/command files, *but* the default > is incompatible. The default is anything you want it to be with PK36. YOU create the configure file. Incompatible? If I were worried about that I would be yelling about the fact that my original XMODEM program (yes I wrote the first one and the name "XMODEM" is mine) has been enhanced and improved by others to the point where it is partly incompatible with my original version. I'm not complaining - I'm enjoying the new features! The only thing that upsets me is that Irv Hoff took the program, changed its name, added some new features, and copyrighted it. Sound familiar? Can you say SEA's ARC sounds like compress, ar, sq/usq, and LZW? I thought you could! > 3. Incompatible with Fansi-console during operations with > contaminated files (reported to the net and Mr. Katz). Where have you been? This was fixed. I use PKARC and Fansi-Console together all the time - without any troubles. > ....If we do not protect the ORIGINATOR we get what we > deserve...no innovation...just rehashed old ideas. Why hasn't SEA improved the crunching efficiency of ARC? The CP/M world has had Steven Greenberg's CRUNCH program for several years now. It consistantly makes smaller files than SEA's ARC. He has published his methods of improving the LZW crunching efficiency in the doc files that are distributed with his program - free to all downloaders. Phil Katz's PKARC is far more efficient (and five times faster) than SEA's ARC. Why hasn't SEA coded some of their routines in MASM to improve the speed? --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 GEnie: W8SDZ