.ZIP Standard to Fragment?

fudgefactor7 writes "As IDG.NET tells us, the venerable .ZIP compression standard is about to undergo a bit of a schism. PKWare and WinZip, the "big two" in the .ZIP format biz are (unfortunately) going to be making their respective releases incompatible (to an extent) and an archive made with one may not be accessible from another. The problem lies with PKWare not giving information to WinZip, thus making WinZip to go it alone."

Comments

Zip encryption's pretty useless, anyhow.

[Skyshadow]

While this is a Bad Thing from an open-standards standpoint, does anyone actually use the security features on zip? I'd think anyone concerned enough to protect their archives would want to use a serious encryption format.

So, if a fork occurs in a feature which nobody uses, does it make a sound?

Not that serious

[Chris_Jefferson]

This is only related to the encryption. Those of us who have been using winzip for a long time will remember that winzip never used to handle multiple part zips, so if you wanted to handle them you had to point winzip at a "real" pkzip. I will be very suprised if the same system doesn't occur here. Also who is going to use zip's build in encryption anyway?

PKWare vs. WinZip?

[micromoog]

Goodbye PKWare.

PGP as the new competitor

[Slime-dogg]

It seems as if PKWare and Winzip are moving into the realm that is dominated by PGP and the GNU variant. PGP compresses the data when it encrypts it, so that need was taken care of already. I wouldn't use either Winzip or PKZip to send an encrypted zip file, because PGP is more universally known, and can give you 2048 bit encryption.

AFAIK, the actual zip standard hasn't changed, which means that you'll be able to open zip files with either program (or the WinXP shell... heh). That's what I see most zip files being used for anyway... Windows based shareware / freeware. Stuff where encryption is not necessary.

The venerable tar.gz and tar.bz2 formats, thankfully, will not be dictated by stupid companies. :-)

Who the hell are PKWare?

[Phreakiture]

Yes, I do know the answer to that, and so do most of you, but the hordes of Windows users out there do not.

What will happen is that the WinZip will win this feud, simply because it is what people use.

...and since the problem stems from PK not sharing information, UNIX zip implementations will likely behave in the same manner as WinZip.

PKWare is dead, too

[Schnapple]

The problem lies with PKWare not giving information to WinZip, thus making WinZip to go it alone

Well then there's probably not going to be much of a problem, given that almost no one uses PKZip anymore. I'm young here but IIRC, everyone in the world used pkzip/pkunzip in the good old DOS days, but then when Windows started to rise, people started looking for a graphical frontend to it, and WinZip pretty much took the lead. I don't recall if WinZip was just a frontend in those days but before long it had integrated ZIP support.

Also, memory serves that Philip W. Katz, the late founder of PKWare, worked with IDC to make the ZIP file format public domain, both because it wasn't entirely original to either organization, and also because it would never take off were it not. So here then we have PKWare, in the wake of the death of Katz, trying to "pull a Microsoft" and make their version incompatible with others in the hopes that more people will use their version. For that matter, I think PKWare's main claim to fame for years now has been that they were "the first".

However this has the potential to backfire. PKWare may be trying to "pull a Microsoft" but they are not Microsoft and so now they're in the position where their product now creates the incompatible file. A file made with PKZip may not work with others, a file made with WinZip almost definitely will.

Winzip's "standard" will win by default

[The Kryptonian]

Most zip files, sorry to say, are made with WinZip now, so all that PKWare's reticence has accomplished is the balkanization of their own product.

Re:W - R - O - N - G

[shaitand]

Actually the DMCA does NOT allow reverse engineering of security mechanisms... like oh... pkware Encryption algorithms...

Re:Does it really matter?

[Darth Fredd]

Ah! Somone understands.

I use the "trial" version of Winzip (You've been using this for 683 days! This isn't free!) and since I *never* compress and I only uncompress when I download a new Quake/HL mod, its no biggie which utility I use.

I think this entire thing is getting blown *way* out of perspective. At risk of being repetetetive and a noing:

Who gives a crap about zip encryption?

Re:More importantly..

[artemis67]

What will my unix *zip programs be compatible with?

If PKWare suddenly closes their format, and if WinZip keeps theirs open, then it looks like WinZip will win by default.

It seems that we've been down this road countless times before. The way to win marketshare in the tech sector is to keep things open and allow other companies to champion your standard for you.

And the winner is...

[Merlin_]

Whichever one is embedded into Windows XP.

Depends on dumping.

[twitter]

So, if a fork occurs in a feature which nobody uses, does it make a sound?

It does when the company in question starts dumping product and people start using it. Just let them promote the useless feature and wait for the ass pains to set in. If they are dumping a "client" ala Adobe PDF, people can say, "Don't complain, the client is free." Ugh, at least Adobe released file specs.

If a company decides to go 20 years retro and create a new non free file format, that's just one more dumb format to get in the way. You would hope that people knew better by now, but they don't. Witness the growing popularity of M$.DOC, the dumbest way to exchange text ever.

Even More Importantly..

[aphor]

If you use GnuPG(GPG) or PGP to encrypt your files, you get compression too. There is absolutely NO reason to use a nonstandard compression utility to do low quality encryption.