Re: MacShrinkit

[cturley2@aol.com (Cturley2)]

Penman wrote:

<< For those of you who don't know the refernce, Shrinkit is based on
an alogrythm named, using the intials of it's developers, LZH.
Unisys now owns the copyrights to that alogrythm, and now charges
big bucks for it's use.  We can still distribute current versions
of Shrinkit and Shrink II (as well as the AppleWorks based utilities
developed by Doug Gum which are now freeare) since they were
developed PRIOR to Unisys deciding to enforce their rights.  Any
attempt to come up with a new product now, without their
permission - and they've stated publically they want their
royalities - would be in direct violation of their express
wishes. Even Ruby should be able to apply his own logic to
THIS one.  So--if you all want a version of Shrinkit that'll run
on a Mac, you're going to have to go over to Sheppy's and get
it.  :) >>

Thank you for that information Penman.  After checking with Unisys on all this
they stated that any
program be it freeware, shareware or commercial distribution that uses the LZH
compression alogrythm can only do so by obtaining a use agreement and licence
from Unisys.  That includes
ShrinkIt, Shrink II and all other such archive programs using the the LZH
compression alogrythm,
be they past, present or future. 

So, the MacShrinkIt project will not happen. Thus, I propose that the Apple II
users adopt the zip archive as their standard archive file format.  After all -
it's FREE without restrictions, use agreement and licence requirmements and
it's has zip and unzip programs for ALL computer platforms.

Cheers,
Tom