Hello Philip!
06 Apr 97 19:35, Philip Thornton wrote to Robert Jung:
 PT> As a side line it appears ZIP is the most popular compression program
 PT> over all platforms.  Does anyone know how this came to be.  Did the
 PT> PKWARE crowd somehow loose the code or did the INFO-ZIP crew do a
 PT> reverse engineering hack job or by simply studying the file structure.
Well, actually, this is the ARJ echo, not the ZIP echo.
There is a very long answer to your question regarding Zip's history.  But to 
get straight to the point: Phil Katz placed the Zip "engine" into the public 
domain many years ago.
Obviously there was no need for InfoZip to "do a reverse engineering hack 
job" and some of this is well explained in the InfoZip Zip.doc and I quote in 
part:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
       Thanks to R. P. Byrne for his  Shrink.Pas  program,  which
       inspired this project, and from which the shrink algorithm
       was stolen; to Phil Katz for placing in the public  domain
       the zip file format, compression format, and .ZIP filename
       extension, and for accepting minor  changes  to  the  file
       format;  to  Steve  Burg for clarifications on the deflate
       [remainder deleted]
Cheers, Hans
... SysOping: More fun than being beaten with a sledgehammer.
--- GoldED/386 2.50+ / Squish / Maximus / Binkley / WINDOWS 95 / V34+
---------------