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Phillip W. Katz, Creator Of PKZIP, Dead At 37

Posted by Roblimo on from the another-tragedy dept.

Danborg writes "ABCNEWS has the story. Evidently Mr. Katz died of complications from chronic alcoholism. A sad end to a true pioneer in the field of data compression. Who doesn't remember converting all their files to .zip format back in the BBS days?" The fact of his death has been out for awhile, but its circumstances only came to our attention yesterday (through *many* submissions). Genius and tragedy are too often linked.

6 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. Gone are the days... by zpengo · · Score: 5
    Oh, the memories...

    I used to go down to the local computer store, which had bins and bins of the latest shareware, all on precious 5 1/4 disks. Each one held some sort of magic that would transform my XT with Hercules graphics into a completely absorbing experience.

    Video games, clones of major applications, dinky little Pascal compilers, my first version of Spacewar....

    But there was a key to all of that magic. Back then, there were no auto-installing CDs. There was no "setup.exe" There would just be a single file, with that ever-familiar extension: ".ZIP"

    I had been on the scene long enough to know what was up, so I not only had PKZIP/PKUNZIP installed on my 4 meg harddrive, but I even had it in the PATH.

    A few keystrokes later, the magic was unlocked.

    We don't know how much we owe to this great man. I genuinely mourn his passing.

    --


    Got Rhinos?
  2. *sigh* by Seumas · · Score: 5
    This is the first I've heard of his death and I have to say that it really makes me feel sad. I'm not aware of much that he's done outside of PKZIP, but I sure remember using ZIP for everything online (especially when a 2400 baud modem was considered fast and a zipped file could half your online time).

    Huffman, Postel, Stevens . . . Now P.W. Katz. I feel guilty for not ever considering any of these people beyond what their program does or does not do for me -- or how I benefitted from their books, until after their death. To think that while we're all out there unzipping our latest copy of the Jargon file or stashing a bunch of porn in a password protected ZIP file, this guy was suffering a serious problem which eventually took his life at the age of *thirty-seven*.

    I'm only 22. I spend all my time working at a desk. I haven't been in-shape for almost six years. I could be next. I could be next and I haven't offered a damn thing to the computer or internet community. These people -- and many others, have.

    I hope that we'll remember these things in subsequent posts in reply to this article. The last thing we need is another disgustingly barbaric replay of the posts we saw when W. Richard Stevens died.

    I hope you have peace, Phillip.

    W. Richard Stevens Slashdot Article
    W. Richard Stevens Home Page
    David Huffman Slashdot Article
    Jon Postel Slashdot Article
    Jon Postel's Home Page


    ---
    icq:2057699
    seumas.com

  3. This is really sad! by DeepDarkSky · · Score: 5
    I definitely remember Phil Katz and all the controversy surrounding him, and how grateful I was to have discovered his programs. I remember the first compression program which was SEA's ARC program. It was very slow. Then my friend and I discovered PKARC and PKXARC, which were much faster than ARC. As PKARC gained popularity because of its overall superiority, SEA sued Phil Katz, and he in turn created PKPAK/PKUNPAK (I think it was still paired like that). Tha PKPAK series didn't last long. The PKZIP series came out next, and that was the series that created the ubiquitous ZIP format that we see today. If I remember correctly, PKZ204G was the last official DOS version of the program, and there were plenty of trojans, etc. that were going around, and Phil created self-authenticating zip files, etc. Lots of neat little cool things. I also remember that other programs were giving PK a run for his money, such as ARJ and LHARC, but they never achieved the overall speed/performance/compression that PKZIP ever did (they were often better in one thing or another but not overall). Then WINZIP came out, and I kind lost sight of PK.

    I still have thousands of ZIP files that were zipped with PKZIP. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have been as into computers as I am, it was because of those early days of playing around with PKARC and PKXARC that really got me started. I am terribly sad to see him go and in such (I think) indignant way.

  4. Re:Would like to know the rest of the story by Harinath · · Score: 5

    IIRC, the ZIP file format was made public domain, thus allowing the Info-ZIP people to write a program that reads ZIP archives, which in turn allowed WinZip to not have to license software from PKware.

    Unlike LZW, the ZIP "deflate" algorithms (LZ77 + Shannon Fano encoding) are unemcumbered. These compression algorithms are used in GNU Zip (gzip) partly for that reason. I think gzip can even read .zip archives with only one file inside. The zip algorithm is also in the zlib library, which is used in the PNG format, for one. The "deflate" algorithm is also described in RFC 1951.

    So, thanks PK, for providing one of the tools that enable us to thumb our noses at Unisys :-)

  5. Re:JKZip by Darchmare · · Score: 5

    Yes, I've heard of that format as well. I believe that no matter how large the content, it can be compressed into the following sentence:

    "Geeks are oppressed. Down with corporate America! Hey, what about those Sex Bots?"

    Very tight algorhythm, indeed.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)

    --

    - Jeff
  6. Philip's remains. by zCyl · · Score: 5

    Does anybody else think it would be morbidly humorous if he were cremated, and then stuffed into a really tiny urn?