Re: Derivative effects.
On Saturday 24 January 2004 01:43 am, Day Brown wrote:
> There is one other example from computer history that applies to our
> power to control our own system: ".zip". Years ago, the BBS networks
> were setup with archived files available with the ".PAK" extension.
It was ".arc" .
> When Phil Katz crafted a new archive tool, he offered it to BBS users
> for free, to extract their .pak downloads. The corporate owners of
> PAK had the money and the lawyers, and found a judge who saw things
> their way, and sued Phil, saying that they owned 'pak' as a
> copywrite.
Arc was released as source, before GPL was accepted by the community.
Here is the original ARC license, in full:
============
You may copy and distribute this program freely, provided that:
1) No fee is charged for such copying and distribution, and
2) It is distributed ONLY in its original, unmodified state.
If you like this program, and find it of use, then your contribution
will be appreciated. You may not use this product in a commercial
environment without paying a license fee of $35. Site licenses and
commercial distribution licenses are available. A program disk and
printed documentation are available for $50.
If you fail to abide by the terms of this license, then your conscience
will haunt you for the rest of your life.
============
PKARC was derived from the original ARC sources, in violation of the
license. PK never released source. The original was just a fast ARC,
then PK extended it to use different methods of compression, making it
incompatible. The PK version had some critical parts hand coded in
assembly language, and by far outperformed the original.
> .... So- Phil sent out an email to all the BBSes, announcing
> that his software would no longer be able to extract '.pak' files,
> and suggested that we all use .zip instead. PKZIP/PKUNZIP is still
> the defacto dos/win archive standard, and PAK INC... went out of
> business. Point being, that it was not up to the judge, nor the
> lawyers, it is up to us.
PK's first change after losing the lawsuit was "pak" which was the same
thing changed only to make it incompatible. Then it was replaced by
"zip". The source for zip was never released, but PK did release specs
that someone could use to make another program that was compatible.
The InfoZip package available on Debian, and WinZip are both non-PK,
from the specs.
At the time, I believed like the majority, that Henderson was just
jealous of his competition, because he couldn't keep up. In hindsight,
now I see it Henderson's way.
How is this case different from GPL violations today?
http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html
http://www.was-ist-fido.de/doks/fnews/fido540.txt
"apt-get install arc"
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