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From: caf@omen.UUCP (Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: SQUASHED!
Message-ID: <564@omen.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Jul-87 21:01:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: omen.564
Posted: Wed Jul  8 21:01:48 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 04:27:58 EDT
References: <642@cgh.UUCP> <231NU013809@NDSUVM1>
Reply-To: caf@omen.UUCP (Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX)
Distribution: world
Organization: Omen Technology Inc, Portland Oregon
Lines: 39

In article <231NU013809@NDSUVM1> NU013809@NDSUVM1.BITNET (Greg Wettstein) writes:
:I guess my biggest concern over this whole controversy is what it says about
:the micro-computer hobby/industry as a whole.  I see the future for good public
:domain/shareware software growing dim in the light of this debate.  Everyone
:seems to concede that he wrote a fine program but there doesn't seem to be any
:reward for doing this, only condemnation and second guessing.  If the
:microcomputer industry as a whole was this afraid of change we would still be
:dosing DOS 1.0 with no pathnames, 8 sector floppies, primitive software and
:little or no graphics (EGA, CGA) capabilities.

Such comments are appropriate for an editor or disk maintenance utility.
But, for the Usenet community, the purpose of ARC programs is to expedite
the transfer of data between computer systems.  The ARC program, crufty as
it is, serves a useful function by virtue of the fact that it has been
made to operate (after a fashion) on many different computer systems.

PKARC proposes to supplant this "compressed Esperanto" with a unique,
incompatible, dialect.  That's fine for files that will never be used on
any computer other the one on which the files were written.

So, I welcome any advances in compression techniques which PKARC or any
other program might be capable of.

But, please don't post files that have been ENCRYPTED by such programs
until the decoding programs are generally available.

:I would like to conclude by congratulating Phil on a very fine accomplishment.
:I also hope that he continues to improve on an already fine product.

Adding what amounts to efficient encryption to PKARC is a dubious
accomplishment in the context that ARC is used on the net.

If Phil's new and improved compression is to be acknowledged as a contribution
to the net, portable C source code to deal with squashed archives must be
made available to update the Unix ARC programs.  

ARC programs constitute a class of software that places special
obligations on software hackers to support their creations with public
release of compatible.