ZIP and ARC (was Red Book)

["Paul R. Santa-Maria" <paulrsm@ameritech.net>]

My fading memory of the ARC/ZIP story makes SEA look even worse.  They
thought they had a lock on all the BBSs of the time with their
compressor/archiver and tried to collect money for the use of that format,
similar to whoever owns the GIF compression format).  Within a few months
of SEA's move, all BBSs had converted from ARC to ZIP.

-- 

Paul R. Santa-Maria
Ann Arbor, Michigan  USA
paulrsm@ameritech.net

Andy McFadden <fadden@netcom.com> wrote in article
<8dftnu$975$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>...
> In article <8dfbam$e1d$1@merope.saaf.se>,
> Paul Schlyter <pausch@saafNOSPAM.se> wrote:
> >A few months later, PKware reappeared with the ZIP archive format,
> >plus the programs PKZIP/PKUNZIP.  The customers strongly disliked
> >ARC's action, and abandoned ARC files as soon as ZIP files became
> >available.  Nowadays everyone use ZIP files (PKware released that
> >archive file format into the public domain btw), and few people have
> >heard about ARC files.  Even though SEA won the case, they lost the
> >market.
> 
> Might also have had something to do with ARC using LZW and PKZIP using
LZH.
> I believe most people are blissfully unaware of a conflict between SEA
> and PKWare, just as they're unaware of why NuArc turned into NuLib, and
> AutoArc turned into AutoArk (bunch of litigous bastards over at SEA).
> SEA simply failed to produce a superior product.