Phil Katz
Phillip " Phil" Walter Katz ( born November 3, 1962 in Milwaukee, † 14 April 2000 ) was an American programmer. Katz has developed the ZIP archive file format.
Life and career
In 1977 he and a colleague optimized programs for programmable pocket calculator. In 1980, Katz the Nicolet High School successfully and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee as a student for the "Computer Science Program " field.
1984 Katz concluded his studies successfully and began as a programmer at Allen- Bradley. There he wrote the source code for programmable logic controllers. In 1986, Katz Software company Gray Soft (now FasTrak Softworks, Inc.) in Milwaukee. In 1987 he left Gray Soft to devote himself entirely to his own company " PKWare " ( Phil Katz goods).
Katz wanted to improve speed and efficiency of the then leading data compression program by ARC System Enhancement Associates ( SEA) and wrote in 1985 an ARC -compatible compression program in assembler: PKArc. He drove the program after the then new shareware principle about Bob Mahoney BBS and earned enough money to start his own company in 1986: PKWare, Inc. This caught the attention of SEA, the stolen Katz accused the ARC code to have and therefore went to court. In the course of the trial it became clear that Katz had taken over parts of the ARC codes 1:1, along with comments and write errors. The negotiated on 1 August 1988 amicable agreement between Katz and Thom Henderson of SEA follow- rending, he presented a distribution of PKArc and brought PKPak out that virtually differed from PKArc only by name.
Soon after, however, he developed a completely new, much improved compression program that exceeded the ARC compression far: PKZIP - Phil Katz's zip program. The program was from 1989, as previously PKArc distributed via mailboxes and achieved widespread popularity within a short time. Most BBS operators moved from ARC to ZIP, and thus had the normal user PKZip use, while the ARC software increasingly lost importance.
Katz told the ZIP-format (not the program itself ) as public domain. It took until 1996 until PKWare brought out a Windows version. At this time, WinZip was Nico Soft ( today Winzip, Inc ) but quite a few years on the market and PKWare could not catch up the lost market share. Despite such poor decisions PKWare obtained a value of several million dollars and involved an office building in Brown Deer (Wisconsin ). Katz worked in the company as a programmer positions. The business portion he left his mother and other staff.
However, during the same period also increased his alcohol addiction. He was arrested several times for driving without a license. To avoid further arrests, he finally stopped his luxurious apartment completely remote and only lived in motels. With PKWare he remained by fax and e- mail contact.
On 14 April 2000 Katz was found dead in a motel room in Milwaukee. There he had a week earlier checked in and hung the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door. He was sitting in his underwear on the floor, still holding an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps in the arm. Five more empty bottles were distributed in the room. As a cause of death was hemorrhage of the pancreas was found, caused by acute alcohol intoxication. Phil Katz was only 37 years old. After his death PKWare was purchased in March 2001 by a group of investors.