Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!pacbell!att!alberta!damask!lowey
From: lowey@damask.UUCP (Kevin Lowey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Phil Katz's bad form
Summary: Blaming Katz for incompatible .ARC files
Message-ID: <1111@damask.UUCP>
Date: 1 Jul 88 20:10:23 GMT
References: <5912@megaron.arizona.edu> <4499@killer.UUCP> <1861@aecom.YU.EDU>
Organization: University of Saskatchewan
Lines: 44

In article <1861@aecom.YU.EDU>, werner@aecom.YU.EDU (Craig Werner) writes:
> 
> 	I realize that nobody likes a law suit in the industry, but
> my personal opinion was that it was bad form on Phil Katz's part to
> label his incompatible files with the same .ARC suffix.  It should
> have been something else, like .ARK.  And for that, SEA should have
> probably taken legal action a long time ago.

  Wait a minute, it was my understanding that AT THE TIME PKARC ADDED THE
EXTENSIONS they were just that ... extensions.  Phil's program could still
READ all of the .ARC files.  He also added the capability to not use these 
extensions if you needed compatible archives for SEA's ARC.

  How is that any different than adding extensions to something like UUENCODE
so it can handle multi-section files, or adding extensions to KERMIT for
long packets and sliding windows, or adding extensions to MS-DOS to support
networks.

  In fact, how is it any different than SEAware releasing a new version of 
their program that handles a new archiving method.  They still use the 
extension .ARC, even though older versions of the program won't unpack the
archives.  Your reasoning would imply they should use .A01, .A02, .A03 etc.
for different releases (which makes sense, but wasn't done).

  I see the .ARC file as a standard, and the alternating new releases of the
SEA and PK archivers as just new extensions to the .ARC standard.  As long 
as each new release supports all the modes from either program in previous
releases, then I'm happy, even if there is a new mode added.  PKware has been
very careful to follow this.  

  However, I *think (correct me if I'm wrong)* that SEA was the first to 
decide NOT to support the other's formats.  This means (to me anyway) SEA 
is the one introducing incompatibilities into the .ARC file, NOT PKware.
PKARC is a superset of ARC, but the reverse is not true.  So how can you 
blame Phil Katz for causing the compatibility problems?

______________________________________________________________________________
| Kevin Lowey                    |The above is the personal opinion of Kevin |
| University of Saskatchewan     |Lowey.  It does not reflect the position of|
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| SaskTel: (306) 966-4826        |                                           |
| Bitnet:LOWEY@SASK. (preferred) |I am in no way affiliated with any of the  |
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