Excerpted from a bulletin posted by Steve Linhart, Sysop of The Cork
Board, 1-201-463-0001, and author of the CVTFON comm program phone
directory conversion utility.  
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Phil Katz's PKARC (now PKPAK) archiver was developed using ARC (tm) 
sources released by Thom Henderson (originally based on 'archive', a 
program in "Software Tools" by Kernighan and Plauger, 1976, later 
incorporating compression routines submitted by various programmers). 
This in itself was not an infringement, but Phil started selling PKARC 
commercially.  In one magazine, PKware's ad was on the opposite page 
facing SEA's.  SEA was justified in taking legal action (could I sell a
program called SLProComm?), but they received an unfair settlement and 
developed an objectionable attitude. 
     
Thom Henderson's presentation on new SEA products at FidoCon turned
into a Katz bashing session, where Thom repeatedly cited the pretrial 
agreement as a "setting a precedent".  When asked if Phil Katz stole 
SEA's code, Thom held up the no-fault agreement and said "Do you think 
he would have signed this if he didn't?"  Gary Shell asked, "If I, or 
anyone else, develops a program that can read and write ARC formats in
a 'clean room' environment, would I be in violation of the copyrights?"
     
Thom and Co. immediately chorused "YES".  Unreasonable. 
     
However, SEA's new Statement of Policy (effective September 13, 1988) 
states: 
     
   "We hereby grant to the entire world and all sentient creatures in 
    the universe who do not already have an agreement with us to the 
    contrary a perpetual, unlimited, galaxy wide license to read, 
    extract, create, or otherwise manipulate ARC format archives.  This
    does not include any license to use our sources or trademarks." 
     
This seems to mean that everyone in the known universe EXCEPT Phil Katz
is permitted to write and use a program that manipulates ARC files, and
Phil (and Phil alone) would not be permitted to write an ARC to
whatever he calls it converter. 
     
Now, SEA has filed a contempt suit over PKPAK.  To quote Karen Little, 
who wrote PKPAK's documentation: 
     
    "The confidential cross-license agreement was settled for $62,500 
     BECAUSE it would have cost Phil Katz of PKware a minimum of 
     $100,000 to defend himself against any allegation brought by SEA. 
     The actual case on Phil's behalf was estimated to actually run 
     between 1/2 and ONE MILLION DOLLARS." 
     [...] 
    "The ESSENCE of the suit is that the PKware Users Manual purposely 
     and deceptively uses words that contain ARC which represent 
     trademark violations of SEA's ARC archiving program. (Ooops, I 
     just did it again! I used a word with "arc" in it. Naughty me.)" 
     
Many users are avoiding SEA products in protest.  Without programs like
PKARC and ARCA/ARCE/ARCV, ARC is untenable in the BBS arena.  SEA's 
behavior may make ARC un-ten-foot-pole-able.  The settlement may ruin 
Phil Katz (remember, these are both little living-room companies), 
who's selling copies of his upcoming archiver (with a new, incompatible
format) in advance, for $47.  PKware loses, SEA loses, and as always, 
the user loses. 
     
Some unjustified panic has resulted in blind support of Phil's new, 
*unreleased* archiver.  The Exec-PC BBS and the SIMTEL IBM software 
archives have publicly banned .ARC files and stated that they will 
convert to Phil's new archiver as soon as it is released. 
     
What if it's buggy?  Slow?  Gives worse compression?  Has a syntax more
cryptic than DSZ?  Would you use it then?  Come on, guys.  Wait until 
it's actually released. 
     
My position: 
     
This CBCS uses .ARC files created by PKPAK, because most of you have 
.ARC extractors, and the latest versions of the ones I know of all 
support "squashing".  Even SEA's ARC grudgingly supports it, but labels
it as "Deviant". 
     
When Phil Katz's new program comes out, I will judge it on it's own 
merits and see if it produces smaller files than PKPAK, ZOO, or DWC. 
(Wouldn't it be nice if PK wrote a turbo ZOO instead of something new?)
     
I am willing to abandon the familiar .ARC arena, but speed and size
will probably be the bottom line.  Or, I may take a vote (then ignore
it and do what I want anyway, but knowing how unpopular my decision
is). 
     
DWC has sometimes availed me smaller files than PKPAK.  Unfortunately, 
it is not well known.  It has roughly the same syntax and some features
PKPAK doesn't.  I encourage users to try it out and consider this 
alternative in the changing standard to come. 
     
Steve Linhart 
Sysop of The Cork Board, 1-201-463-0001 
FidoNet 1:107/345, UUCP linhart@topaz.rutgers.edu 
     
(The reprint of the cross-license agreement, available in another file,
has been omitted.)