IP: PKzip creator Phil Katz dead at 37

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> The Associated Press
>
> M I L W A U K E E, April 22 — A man who developed one of the world’s most
> popular pieces of computer software has died at age 37.
>
>      Phillip W. Katz died of complications from chronic alcoholism,
> according to the Milwaulkee medical examiner’s records.
>
>      Katz’s file-compression software is used around the world.
>
>      “In early days, compression was all done with software because there
> was no hardware to do this stuff,” said computer science professor Leonard
> Levine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “So Katz put together a
> program called PKZip, the Phil Katz zip program.”
>
>      The compression software made communication between computers faster
> and less expensive.
>
>      “His program was instrumental in inexpensive, dependable
> communication,” Levine said. But, he added, “what I felt was most important
> about it is the fact that you can get it for free and not pay for it.”
>
>      Nearly all program files downloaded from the Internet have the suffix
> .zip, meaning they are compressed in the format Katz developed.

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