Tar that one up, Doc!

Via the Internet ‘Klangspiel’, I found out that WinZip Computing (formerly Nico Mak Software) has been taken over by Corel Company. Yes, it’s that Corel, the one that creates CorelDraw and that, and oh, yes, the Corel that was supposed to take over (or ‘merge’) with Borland.

So hey, who cares? Winzip is just the fancy stuff behind ordinary compressed files, as specified by the guys that created the zip format, PKWare! You may remember the tragic story behind Phil Katz, the programmer who was sued by the original makers of ARC and….well… his format for compression sparked various “Very Useful Technologies” that were even incorporated into DOS. Stacker, I’m looking at you!¹

So, who cares about ‘WinZip’: it’s just another frontend for a fileformat that has dozens of good open-source alternatives. And hey, you can always use the command-line (multi-platform)!

1. Back in the days, I never cared about using DoubleSpace/Stacker, because it didn’t make sense when hard-drive space became cheaper with the month.
2. Earlier I also read an e-mail of someone instructing someone to ‘winzip’ a file, which struck me as ‘weird’. Imagine telling a unix person to ‘winzip’ a file. In about 20 years, nobody will actually associate ‘winzipping files’ with ‘compressing files’.