Phil Katz

Phillip W. Katz, better known as Phil Katz (November 3, 1962 - April 14, 2000), was a computer programmer best-known as the author of PKZIP, a program for compressing files which ran under the PC operating system DOS.

Early Life

He received a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

His first foray into the compression world started in the mid-1980s with a faster version of the popular ARC program, which he called PkArc. PkArc's speed quickly made it popular, much to the chagrin of the ARC authors, System Enhancement Associates. They sued and he was forced to change the program. It had been discovered that although SEA distributed Source Code with their product, as was quite common in Mainframe software packages, Katz had used this source in his own product, even to the point where comments and spelling errors were found to be in the same places. However it appears the suit was not very specific, because he quickly released PKPAK, which was similar in all but name. The BBS community however took the suit as a big-guy (SEA) vs. little-guy (Katz) even though both companies were family businesses with less than 5 or so people, and quickly shunned any product from SEA, much to Thom Henderson of SEA's heartache.

This whole debacle was considered extremely controversial and Katz's version of the story in his own words will forever remain unknown.

PKZIP

Katz soon replaced PKPAK with the new and completely re-written PKZIP, released as shareware, which 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. Believing that Windows was just a fad, Katz delayed the release of his own Windows version of PKZIP, allowing Nicosoft (makers of WinZip) to gain the larger usershare that it holds to this day.

PKZIP made Katz one of the most successful shareware authors of all time. Although his company PKWARE became a multimillion dollar company, Katz hired people he trusted to run the company and continued writing software himself.

Death

Katz battled alcoholism for years. His friends tried to help him with his addiction, but they were rebuffed, and he gradually shut them out completely. He was arrested several times for driving under the influence, and later in his life, spent more time in cheap motels and strip clubs than his own home.

Katz was found dead in a hotel room with an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps in his hand on April 14, 2000 at the age of 37. A coroner's report stated his death was a result of pancreatic bleeding caused by acute alcoholism.

External Links

• Slashdot article on Katz's death
• Obituary on Phillip Katz
• News Article on Katz's death
• Tribute to Phil Katz
• A video documentary about the arc vs zip controversy (WMV format)
• Thom Henderson's official statement regarding Phil Katz' death