You have to be a true nerd to remember, but there once was a command-line program called pkunzip.exe. When you wanted to get the files out from those big .ZIP files, pkunzip — named for the creator of the ZIP file, Phil Katz — was the biggest game in town. (Though there were those who dabbled in others such as .RAR, .LZH, and .ARJ — ahh, how I remember my utility belt of decompressors…)

Anyway, the reason you probably haven’t heard of PKZip (which still exists, some ten years after its zenith at version 2.04g) is that another company stole the crown: Nico Mak Computing, now renamed after its flagship product. WinZip.

It seems that nobody wanted to type pkunzip -e filename.zip in the brave new world of Windows. Through the use of a better interface (still going strong nine versions later), WinZip handily beat the inventors of the format.

I think there’s a lesson for the Linux team in there somewhere.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2003 at 11:53 pm and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.