Talk:Phil Katz

POV?
In Early Life, the tone and the order of events presented still implies that PK was a victim of SEA, rather than vice versa. Why is the word "chagrin" used? SEA distributed standard source code which would compile on any machine: portability was the goal. PK made a faster version but was machine specific, detracting from portability. He also refused to licence the code he had copied from SEA. He also sold his version of ARC, directly competing with SEA. It would be quite accurate to say that PK stole work from SEA and sold it as his own. Whether this made SEA embarrased or annoyed is a POV. The fact is they suffered financial loss from unfair competition (and probably illegal, but PK settled before the suit was decided).

"he was forced to change the program..." In fact Phil Katz agreed to settle out of court, when PK realised he had no chance after hearing the testimony from an expert witness. This is tantamount to PK admitting he had infringed copyright.

In the sentence "It had been discovered that although...", I don't understand the context of the word "although". "although SEA distributed source code they didn't expect anyone to rip it off and start selling their own version" - is that what was meant?

Is it enough to say the debacle was extremely controversial, when the facts clearly show PK was guilty of theft?

PKZIP therefore, was far from the result of innovation and fair competition, more the result of PK's failed attempt to steal code from SEA.

This page presents as complete a (neutral) description of events as I can find History of Computer Compression. There is a less neutral page from the side of SEA here Ben Baker Remembers Phil Katz, and from Thom Henderson himself Thom Henderson on Phil Katz. This is a library of material here CONTROVERSY: LAWSUITS: SEA vs. PKWARE

The folklore of Phil Katz is that he pioneered shareware, more or less invented compression for the internet, and took on the big guys and won. In reality none of these are true. OK, so PK had a tragic death. But Thom Henderson was the true pioneer and innocent victim in all this, and he doesn't even have a wiki page. The tragedy of PK does not concern me as much as the injustice done to Thom Henderson by painting PK as a hero, rather than what he was, a popular thief.

FWIW I have no connection with any of these people.

86.130.206.129 13:30, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Your material looks preety good so I think adding a 'Controversy' section is apropriate. 193.230.245.6 09:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't disagree with your assessment at large, but accepting a settlement is not tantamount to an admission of wrongdoing. Often, there are good reasons to settle even if you don't feel you are liable. Lack of money for legal representation, or not being willing to take the risk of a potentially much worse judgement are the foremost. You definitely need to check your game theory there.
 * This in fact reminds me of the Happy Birthday to You song which is estimated to generate $2 million of royalties a year for TimeWarner although there is substantial evidence that their copyright title is void. Aragorn2 11:48, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Nicosoft?
I've always known Winzip's publisher as Nico Mak Computing, and had never heard of "Nicosoft" before. I don't think that's ever been the company's name. Someone who knows better than me should check this out.

NB: They recently (?) changed their name to Winzip International, and there's not mention of previous names on their website.

Pancreatic bleeding?
What is the source that was used for his cause of death? Hemorrhage into a chronically inflamed pancreas is possible, but so is acute pancreatitis with hemorrhagic necrosis. JFW | T@lk  21:31, 12 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The New York Times/ AP obituary gives "complications from chronic alcoholism" as the cause of death. A number of secondary sources claim "pancreatic bleeding", but I can not find an original copy of the medical examiner's report thus far:  , which references a jsonline.com article which is no longer freely available.  Probably the most reliable secondary source would be Salon , which claims "The official cause of death: acute pancreatic bleeding caused by alcoholism.".  But this was in an aside on an article on another topic, so I don't know how carefully researched it was.  Most of the google hits seem to simply be echoing Wikipedia.


 * Aha, here's a google-cached hit of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article that seems to be the original secondary source of the claim: . Nandesuka 22:01, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Thom Henderson Link
I have restored the Thom Henderson link. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a fan club. Sometimes that means that when people have said nasty things about each other, we discuss or link to that, as long as said things aren't libelous or demonstrably false. Thom Henderson's perspective on Phil Katz is nearly unique, having come into direct legal conflict with him, and his perspective is clearly relevant. Last time I checked, "rude" wasn't a reason not to link to a primary or secondary source. Nandesuka 13:16, 8 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm really not a fan of Katz. However, links must cater a certain standard, at least as far as their seriousness is concerned.  The motivation of Henderson's text is not the will to inform us but to have an outlet for his hatred.  I have nothing, really nothing against a critical text about Katz; equally I have nothing against a non-NPOV article being linked.  However, Henderson's text is the *opposite* of NPOV, which puts its credibility in question.  Besides, it doesn' add significant facts to the other sources.  Other opinions are welcome. – Torsten Bronger 15:11, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Of course Henderson's text is POV, thats WHY we link to it. It's a primary source and vital for researchers and historians, it along side the obituary and the documentary are the most vital. It has been cited it shouldnt be in there because of "bad taste" that is in itself POV and a form of censorship, I will stick it back in. - UnlimitedAccess 13:46, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Censorship. I don't think that word means what you think it means.  Thom's little rant has no informaiton that the video with Thom breaking down to tears when he remembered how the BBS community hated him for the anti-Katz lawsuit has.  Samboy 07:44, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
 * As Thom's rant *does* have significant bearing on the matter, regardless of its POV,I would suggest that merely linking to it (with a suitable POV warning/disclaimer). He's a primary source; perhaps one of dubious reliability, but he offers first-hand accounts that nobody else retains. The video of Thom breaking down to tears probably isn't NPOV, but it documents his devastation in ways that text can not. True, false, or muddy, I think the link retains historical value, and should stay. Text explaining "this is  potentially biased information, don't rely on it." may also work. Raduga 01:21, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, they both link to essentially the same content, and the text rant links to the video. Would you be happy if we replaced the Video link with the Text link, since that links to more content than the Video alone? I still support linking to content from Thom's site, though we may not need multiple links to the same material. Raduga 01:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Dates
There ought to be some dates for events other than death; surely the legal documents cited establish at least some years.

what happened to pkware?
obviously they are still going and obviously they aren't owned by katz anymore, i had a quick look at their site and it doesn't say anything obvious about what type of company they are.

so does anyone have any information on what pkware is today and how they became that? Plugwash 21:34, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

PKWARE is mentioned three times, but there is no hyperlink. Searching Wikipedia on it gets redirected to PKZIP. That page does not deal with PKWARE either, aside from a few confusing comments. It makes sense for this page to have a PKware section, and there should be a separate PKWare page too.

PKWARE was founded by Phil Katz and continued on after his death. In April, 2000, PKWare's website said "The family of Phil Katz and the employees of PKWARE, Inc. wish to thank everyone for their kind thoughts and condolences. To those of us who knew Phil as a friend, mentor and employer, we will greatly miss his caring, generosity, help and kindness. We who knew him both personally and professionally will always view him as a gentle and special human being who will be sadly missed."

So it was clearly his company, and his employees, and it continued after his death as the same company. I don't know who owns it, how ownership was transferred, or who was running the company at the time of his death. I know he was not very active in the company's affairs at the time of his death, and don't know how much, if any, of the company he still owned. It's still a privately held company, so it's not clear whether his family retains any share of ownership. The only thing that is clear is that he did have a family.

Ascent Solutions, Inc (ASIware) was a vendor that made PKZip compatible software for platforms such as VM/CMS, MVS, (both mainframe), VMS, UNIX, Mac, and AS/400. They were partners with PKware, and sold solutions with PKware's blessing. ASi's 1996 website, www.asiware.com, said "In 1992, ASi entered an agreement with PKWARE Inc. to port its successful data compression product, PKZIP from DOS to new platforms including MVS, UNIX and Macintosh. The first version of PKZIP UNIX was released by ASi in October 1992 and by February 1993, it introduced its first beta version for the MVS." The current company bearing their name has no relationship with the former company, and asiware.com now gets redirected to pkware.com, so it's reasonably clear that most of their current products for other platforms came from ASi. z/OS and i5/OS are the current names for MVS and OS/400, so the products sold should be the current versions of ASi's software. ASi may have been a bigger company than PKWARE by then, so it might have been ASi that bought PKWARE, or vice versa, but the name PKWARE had more cachet, so it made sense as a company name either way. Since PKWARE was late to market with a Windows version, and its market share was minor and shrinking (no pun intended) compared to WinZip, it's doubtful that PKWARE could have survived on its Windows product, so the current company most likely survives on corporate sales for other platforms. --Hagrinas

UW-Milwaukee or UW-Madison
I think Phil Katz graduated from UW-Milwaukee not UW-Madison. Two of the external links verify that. Miaers 22:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Notes from 216.180.75.210 removed from article text
BEGIN SIDE NOTE This is not my recollection of what happened. As I recall SEA claimed that Katz had no right under copyright laws, 1) to have his PK software write a file using the .ARC file-structure and format; and 2) to copy or mimic the "..look and feel.." of ARC. This created an outrage among the software users who abandoned use of SEA software in protest. This was discussed extensively on various FidoNet groups in the mid to late 1980s. I do not recall any mention of pirated source code and am highly skeptical of that allegation. See  for more information. In particular, see  -vpd 10/14/07 END SIDE NOTE


 * This was added to the article text, but it seemed relevant to discussion. — wfaulk 19:09, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

"Reported that he died with no friends remaining"
Does anyone have any evidence or documented report on this? It's not exactly a pleasant thing to say about him. It may well be true, but I think there should be a weasel words warning here. --193.130.175.129 (talk) 12:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * From what I've read, it sounds like a fair statement. He hadn't seen Chastity Fischer since 1999, or at least 7 months before his death, and I haven't seen any reports of other friends, although I'm sure she still cared about him, as did others.  (talk) 13:48, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I was just re-reading an article and realized I was wrong. Chastity last saw Phil just a few weeks before his death.  She was reportedly a wonderful friend even at that time.  Mcavic (talk) 02:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Hell, I cared about the guy. His company took my call when I was at the FDA and he personally called me back with a fix to his pkzip program that had a bug that prevented you from unzipping password protected files.  RIP Phil Katz.-G (talk) 15:16, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

.ZIP format in Windows?
It's probably not obvious to the novice reader how the ZIP format became part of Windows.Landroo (talk) 12:54, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * What do you mean? ZIP is used by Macs too. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  12:41, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think they mean native support? ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  05:09, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Windows didn't achieve native ZIP support until XP. I'd be interested to know if PKWare was paid for this, and how much.  Mcavic (talk) 13:51, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Windows had native ZIP files in Windows Me, actually. http://www.windowsnetworking.com/j_helmig/winmezip.htm It was called "Compressed Folders" and it was an optional component. Back then, Microsoft was a little less pushy and unlike the garbage that they were using to destroy companies with like Internet Explorer, some things didn't actually have to be installed. (IE/Trident could be removed too, just not officially.) Microsoft gotta Microsoft, so of course it had a horrendous and completely stupid security vulnerability. It saved your encrypted ZIP passwords in a plaintext log file on the hard drive every time you made a password protected ZIP file. https://download.cnet.com/Windows-Me-Exposed-Passwords-in-Compressed-Files-Vulnerability-Patch/3000-2092_4-10058010.html Daemonfc (talk) 00:19, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Phillip Katz.jpg
Image:Phillip Katz.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 14:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Rating thoughts
I rated this article in its current form as "Start" class. Some thoughts for improvement: In short, one could probably write a very fascinating book on the life of this gifted, but troubled, individual. The Wikipedia article should serve as an introduction to this hypothetical work. -- llywrch (talk) 15:43, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Did Katz have any other notable contributions to software other than PKZip? (I honestly don't know.)
 * Needs more about the business side of PKZip. (From what the article currently says, one could infer he simply wrote the utility one day, & it magically appeared in the hands of computer users across the world. I was a registered user of PKZip back in the early 1990s, & *I* don't have any idea of how it was originally marketed -- beyond the fact I received my first copy from a co-worker one day.)
 * What happened to his company after his death? Was there any legal fighting over the rights & profits? (There is nothing in the article about this, & successful businesses have this way of attracting quarrelsome people who want a piece of the action.)
 * More needs to be said about his personal life. I'm not looking for gritty details of his life, just trying to understand how a guy who had written such a successful program let his life spin out of control. (Was it mental issues? Personal tragedy? Shyness? -- Yes, that can be a problem for introverts! -- Rock star syndrome?)


 * Re: personal life -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/katzbio.txt) has some speculation on the reasons: shyness, death of father at a fairly young age (he was 55, Phil Katz was 18 or 19 years of age at the time), estranged from his mother due to disputes over money and company ownership, paranoia over legal warrants. Tunkki-1970 (talk) 02:36, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Broken footnote
Footnote #1 in the article is now pointing to a dead link. PKWare has evidently removed the Phil-Katz page from their website. However, I can get to the page through archive.org at this link: http://web.archive.org/web/20101001181829/http://www.pkware.com/about-us/phil-katz. I don't know how to change the footnote to be in compliance with Wikipedia standards, so if anyone reading this knows how to change the footnote so it takes someone to PKWare's old page on archive.org, I'd appreciate if you would do that. Thanks. Furchild (talk) 03:39, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Cause of death
The cause of death is cited as "chronic alcoholism", but other Wiki languages have "accute alcoholism", and so has text I googled that seems copied from an older version of the article. Unfortunately, the two links point to a 404 and a paywall, so I can't check the original cause (also can't find on Google). Jalwikip (talk) 11:56, 9 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The archived Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article (dated 21 May 2000) in the external links section says "acute pancreatic bleeding caused by chronic alcoholism", which agrees with the article. --Zundark (talk) 16:20, 9 March 2020 (UTC)