Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:17971 comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d:679
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!phri!marob!manes
From: manes@marob.MASA.COM (Steve Manes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: PK361.EXE
Message-ID: <363@marob.MASA.COM>
Date: 12 Aug 88 08:11:40 GMT
References: 
Organization: ESCC  New York City
Lines: 32

From article , by msmith@topaz.rutgers.edu (Mark Robert Smith):
> Steve,  Sorry, but stealing somebody else's market is a standard
> practice inthe world of software.  Else, why are word processors able
> to read WordStar's format?  Why can Excel read Lotus 123?  Why can
> Paradox import dBase and RBase files?  It is standard to attempt to
> grab somebody else's users.  That's called competition, and is the
> backbone of the American business world.  If you build a better, but
> still compatible mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

I wasn't critical of PKARC attempting to maintain (and profit from)
compatibility with SEA's ARC.  That, as you say, is progress.  What
annoyed me was PKARC adding Squashing to .ARC files, making SEA's ARC
useless for handling such archives.  The whole world isn't running
MS-DOS, you know.  I had a perfectly functional 'arc' utility for Unix
that could handle the "standard" ARC format.  Then I suddenly found
myself (and my Unix BBS) under a flood of .ARC files that I couldn't
uncrunch, which meant manually moving them over to my DOS machine and
unpacking them with PKXARC so I could make sure that some bozo wasn't
uploading Lotus 1-2-3 to my public files directories.

Don't misunderstand me; PKARC was a serious improvement over SEA's ARC
for >DOS< users.  But Thom Henderson was kind enough to publish his
source and that led to ARC becoming a semi-standard for moving files
across different operating systems.  When PKARC became successful, it
cut the legs off that portability and made ARC, once again, an MS-DOS
archiver.  I didn't see that as progressive.  If Phil had adopted
another file extension for his incompatible Squashed archives I think
everyone would have been a lot happier, including SEA.
-- 
Steve Manes		Roxy Recorders, Inc.		Magpie-HQ BBS
UUCP : {rutgers|cmcl2}!hombre!magpie!manes		(212)420-0527
Smail: manes@MASA.COM