Phil Katz, creator of PKZIP, has died
Jonathan Nash
Programmer whose work benefited millions, but not himself
PHILLIP KATZ
Phillip Katz, programmer, was born on November 3,
1962. He died on April 14 aged 37
The early death of the software pioneer Phillip Katz - the "PK"
behind the enormously popular file compression program
PKZIP - shows once more that brilliance is no guarantee of
happiness.
Katz, whose program has been used by almost everyone who
has ever copied software over the Internet or installed
programs from a CD given away on a magazine cover,
created one of the building blocks of the electronic
revolution, but died aged just 37 in a Milwaukee hotel room
of complications from alcoholism, unable to find contentment
in his achievements.
The program which made Katz's name is a file-compression
and archive tool. It is widely used to deal with large data
files, or collections of them, creating a single, compact file
that can be put on to a floppy disk or CD-rom, or sent over
the Internet.
Initially used by computer experts who wanted a convenient
way to squash as much information as possible on to a single
floppy disk, or to send things over relatively slow Internet
links, PKZIP remains important and is still widely used. It is
a convenient tool for home computer users, enabling them to
package up family photos, word-processed letters or
children's drawings so as to send them by email to relatives
or friends. As the speed of our networks has increased, so
have our demands on it, so that now massive data archives,
video clips and sound files are routinely compressed to be
sent over even the fastest links.
Phillip W. Katz studied computer science at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where like most programmers in the
1970s and 1980s, he wrote many small "utility" programs.
He was particularly interested in how to compress computer
files.
There are two elements to archiving. First, there is the file
format, the detailed specification of exactly how data is
squashed and stored. Then there is the program which can
read and write the archive files. Katz began working on
archiving in 1986, and came up with a moderately successful
program called PKPAK, [also pkarc] which created compressed
archives using a well-known format of the time called ARC.
But SEA, the original developers of ARC, sued him for
copyright infringement. In response to what he saw as an
unreasonable attempt to impose intellectual property rights
on software, he created his own archive format, the ZIP file.
And in 1989, in an act which may be considered folly in
these dot-com obsessed days, he gave it away by launching
the format in the public domain.
This meant that anyone who wanted to could use the ZIP
format without having to ask or pay a fee. It also meant that
thousands of programs that could read and write ZIP files
were developed, ensuring the success of the format - which
rapidly eclipsed its ARC rival. Of these programs the best
and most popular was Katz's own, PKZIP. Bob Gorman of
PKWare, which now has a staff of 20, says that Katz "lost
the battle but he won the war" of archiving.
As well as producing smaller files, PKZIP made it easier to
package the large number of them required for a
complicated program into a single file that could be easily
distributed. This had a significant impact on the computing
industry by making it much simpler to develop programs that
can be installed at home with little or no technical skill.
Although PKZIP is commercially produced, it is available to
users as shareware. Copies of the program are freely
available on the net or on magazine cover disks, and can be
installed free. But those who find it useful are asked to send
a payment either as a cheque or online.
While few shareware authors become rich, many are able to
support their programming activity in this way. Katz was one
of the few who made enough money from his program to set
up a company. Shareware is rarely a way to make a
company rich, but many large companies find it useful to give
away some programs in an attempt to build a market.
Described even by fellow programmers as "a bit nerdy",
Phillip Katz could not cope with the pressures of running the
company he founded, or of being a software innovator with
little to do apart from improve the product he had named. In
1997 his house in Milwaukee was broken into by council
workers when neighbours complained about the stench and
infestation. Rubbish, food, computer code, pornography and
electronic equipment were piled up indiscriminately, and
took three days to clear. Katz had moved out, and thereafter
lived in his car and in motels.
Katz was a painfully introverted man who lost touch with
reality. At his death he was no longer actively involved in
work on PKZIP.
He is survived by his mother, at whose kitchen table PKZIP
was conceived, and his sister.
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