| Phillip Walter Katz | |
|---|---|
 Photograph courtesy of PKWARE, Inc. All Right Reserved. |
|
| Born | November 3, 1962 |
| Died | April 14, 2000 (aged 37) |
| Nationality | United States |
| Occupation | Computer programmer |
| Known for | Creator of zip file format PKZIP |
Phillip Walter Katz (November 3, 1962 – April 14, 2000) was a computer programmer best-known as the creator of the zip file format for data compression, and the author of PKZIP, a program for creating zip files which ran under DOS.
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Education
Katz graduated from University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee with a bachelor's degree in computer science.[1]
Software development
Following his graduation, Phil Katz was hired by Allen-Bradley Co. as programmer. He wrote code to run programmable logic controllers which operated manufacturing equipment on shop floors worldwide for Allen-Bradley's customers.
Katz left Allen-Bradley in 1986 to work for Graysoft, a Milwaukee-based software company. At the time, he had worked on an alternative to Thom Henderson's ARC, named PKARC. ARC was written in C, with the source code available on System Enhancement Associates' BBS. PKARC, written partially in assembly language, was much faster (in that era, compilers were not as good at optimization as they would become in the 21st century). Katz had a special flair for optimizing code. Besides writing critical code in assembly language, he would write C code to perform the same task in several different ways and then examine the compiler output to see which produced the most efficient assembly code. PKARC's speed quickly made it more popular than the earlier program.
He initially released only PKXARC, an extraction program, as freeware. Its much greater speed caused it to spread very quickly throughout the BBS community. Strong positive feedback and encouragement from the community prompted Katz to first add a compression program, PKARC, and then to make his software shareware.
PKWARE foundation
Phil Katz founded PKWARE, Inc. in 1986, where the company's operations were done in his home in Glendale, Wisconsin,[2] but Katz did not leave Graysoft until 1987. Steve Burg, a former Graysoft programmer, joined PKWARE in 1988.
Controversy and lawsuits
PKARC, in addition to duplicating the compression techniques used in ARC, added an additional algorithm which produced smaller files. However, these files still used the file extension ".ARC". This led to the situation where files which appeared to be created by SEA's ARC could not be read by that program. System Enhancement Associates's Henderson considered this an appropriation of his product's trademarked name, and sued Katz. Katz withdrew PKARC from the market and instead released PKPAK, which was similar in all but name and the file extension used.
System Enhancement Associates (SEA) soon discovered that Katz had copied significant amounts of the copyrighted source code distributed with ARC. They sued for trademark violation and copyright infringement. SEA and Katz settled under a confidential cross-licence agreement.[3] According to expert witnesses hired by SEA, Katz had copied ARC's source code so extensively that even identical comments and spelling errors were found. The BBS community, arguably due to prompting from Katz, took the suit as an example of a large, faceless corporation crushing the little-guy — even though both companies were family businesses with fewer than 5 or so people. SEA's founder, Thom Henderson, has said that users who spoke to him at the time "didn't care" if PKARC misappropriated his copyrights and trademark; they just wanted to use the fastest software to compress and uncompress files.[4]
PKZIP
Katz quickly replaced PKARC with PKPAK, and soon after that, with the new and completely re-written PKZIP. Released as shareware, PKZIP compressed both better and faster than ARC. Katz kept the new ZIP file format open. As a result, it soon became a standard for file compression across many platforms.
PKZIP made Katz one of the most well-known shareware authors of all time. Although his company PKWARE became a multimillion dollar company, Katz was more noted for his technical expertise than business prowess. His family assisted him in running the company, but he eventually fired them when they denied him access to the company's profits.[5]
Katz was adamantly opposed to Microsoft Windows in the early 90s. This led to PKWARE missing out on the opportunity to be the first to bring PKZIP to the platform.
Alcoholism
Katz led a very troubled personal life and battled alcoholism for years. The earliest known arrest occurred in 1991. About a year later, Katz was again convicted of drunk driving. Between 1994 and September 1999, Katz was arrested five times for operating after suspension or revocation of his driver's license.
Before his death, Ozaukee County Sheriff's Department had several outstanding warrants against Katz, including jumping bail and the automobile operation charges Operating While Intoxicated and Operating After Revocation.[6]
Death
On April 14, 2000, at the age of 37, Katz was found dead in a hotel room with an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps in his hand. A coroner's report stated his death was a result of acute pancreatic bleeding caused by chronic alcoholism.[7]
References
- ^ Phil Katz biography from PKWARE
- ^ Phil Katz (PKARC author) sued by SEA (ARC author)
- ^ System Enhancement Associates, Inc. v. PKWare, Inc. and Phillip W. Katz, No. 88-C-447, Judgment for Plaintiff on Consent, E.D. Wisc. (Aug. 1., 1988)
- ^ Now That It's Over, What Did It Mean?; statement of Thom Henderson, president, System Enhancement Associates, taken from the October 3, 1988 issue of FidoNews
- ^ The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz
- ^ Outstanding Warrants for Phil Katz (2000)
- ^ "Famed software pioneer dies at 37". Journal Sentinel. 2000-04-22. "Phillip W. Katz, the eccentric inventor of computer file-compression software used around the world, and a pioneer in the concept of shareware, is dead at age 37. The cause of death was complications from chronic alcoholism, according to medical examiner's records. Katz came onto the computer scene when communication was expensive and slow. His program, PKZip, played a large role in making Internet communication faster, said a University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee computer science"
External links
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report about Phil Katz (via Wayback machine)
- Obituary of Phillip Katz (via Wayback machine)
- "Compression", a video documentary about the arc vs zip controversy (WMV format) from BBS: The Documentary
- Katz bio from BBS: The Documentary
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