Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!ll-xn!vlsi!malpass From: malpass@vlsi.ll.mit.edu (Don Malpass) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Re: SEA's trademark on ARC allegedly invalid Summary: convergence is better than divergence Message-ID: <155@vlsi.ll.mit.edu> Date: 6 Sep 88 15:37:00 GMT Article-I.D.: vlsi.155 References: Reply-To: malpass@ll-vlsi.arpa.UUCP (Don Malpass) Organization: MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington MA Lines: 25 In article W8SDZ@SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (Keith Petersen) writes: >.... I wouldn't be too surprised to see a wholesale >change to whatever new compression method Phil Katz comes up with. Please, Dear God: let us not have yet another scheme. One of the reasons that zoo is viewed with such favor is that there is a commitment to keep it upward and downward compatible. I could easily be persuaded that the sea/pk flap might have been avoided if pk had not implemented YET ANOTHER compression scheme to ring the last 0.001 dB of compression efficiency out of the resultant program but had simply been satisfied to blow away the older PC version because pk was so much faster. That speed increase alone was enough to give him a place in freeware history. The recent mail requesting new zoo features conspicuously does NOT include requests for other compression schemes. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the resultant .arc incompatibility forced everybody to keep several flavors around since not every .arc could be unpacked on all machines. That, and the NEED (not just desirability) to have a mainframe version will keep sea's arc - as well as zoo - around. We all lost this war; not just sea. I apologize for finally joining this fray which I so desperately wish would quiet down and go away. -- Don Malpass [malpass@LL-vlsi.arpa], [malpass@spenser.ll.mit.edu] My opinions are seldom shared by MIT Lincoln Lab, my actual employer RCA (known recently as GE), or my wife.