The Times of London, England http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/05/11/timobbiobi03004.html PHILLIP KATZ The early death of the software pioneer Phillip Katz - the "PK" behind the enormously popular file compression program PKZIP - shows once more that brilliance is no guarantee of happiness. Katz, whose program has been used by almost everyone who has ever copied software over the Internet or installed programs from a CD given away on a magazine cover, created one of the building blocks of the electronic revolution, but died aged just 37 in a Milwaukee hotel room of complications from alcoholism, unable to find contentment in his achievements. Section: OBITUARIES Published: 11 May 2000 May 11 2000 OBITUARIES Programmer whose work benefited millions, but not himself PHILLIP KATZ Phillip Katz, programmer, was born on November 3, 1962. He died on April 14 aged 37 The early death of the software pioneer Phillip Katz - the "PK" behind the enormously popular file compression program PKZIP - shows once more that brilliance is no guarantee of happiness. Katz, whose program has been used by almost everyone who has ever copied software over the Internet or installed programs from a CD given away on a magazine cover, created one of the building blocks of the electronic revolution, but died aged just 37 in a Milwaukee hotel room of complications from alcoholism, unable to find contentment in his achievements. The program which made Katz's name is a file-compression and archive tool. It is widely used to deal with large data files, or collections of them, creating a single, compact file that can be put on to a floppy disk or CDrom, or sent over the Internet. Initially used by computer experts who wanted a convenient way to squash as much information as possible on to a single floppy disk, or to send things over relatively slow Internet links, PKZIP remains important and is still widely used. It is a convenient tool for home computer users, enabling them to package up family photos, word-processed letters or children's drawings so as to send them by email to relatives or friends. As the speed of our networks has increased, so have our demands on it, so that now massive data archives, video clips and sound files are routinely compressed to be sent over even the fastest links. Phillip W. Katz studied computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where like most programmers in the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote many small "utility" programs. He was particularly interested in how to compress computer files. There are two elements to archiving. First, there is the file format, the detailed specification of exactly how data is squashed and stored. Then there is the program which can read and write the archive files. Katz began working on archiving in 1986, and came up with a moderately successful program called PKPAK, which created compressed archives using a well-known format of the time called ARC. But SEA, the original developers of ARC, sued him for copyright infringement. In response to what he saw as an unreasonable attempt to impose intellectual property rights on software, be created his own archive format, the ZIP file. And in 1989, in an act which may be considered folly in these dotcom obsessed days, he gave it away by launching the format in the public domain. This meant that anyone who wanted to could use the ZIP format without having to ask or pay a fee. It also meant that thousands of programs that could read and write ZIP files were developed, ensuring the success of the format - which rapidly eclipsed its ARC rival. Of these programs the best and most popular was Katz's own, PKZIP. Bob Gorman of PKWare, which now has a staff of 20, says that Katz "lost the battle but he won the war" of archiving. As well as producing smaller tiles, PKZIP made it easier to package the large number of them required for a complicated program into a single file that could be easily distributed. This had a significant impact on the computing industry by making it much simpler to develop programs that can be installed at home with little or no technical skill. Although PKZIP is commercially produced, it is available to users as shareware. Copies of the program are freely available on the net or on magazine cover disks, and can be installed free. But those who find it useful are asked to send a payment either as a cheque or online. While few shareware authors become rich, many are able to support their programming activity in this way. Katz was one of the few who made enough money from his program to set up a company. Shareware is rarely a way to make a company rich, but many large companies find it useful to give away some programs in an attempt to build a market. Described even by fellow programmers as "a bit nerdy", Phillip Katz could not cope with the pressures of running the company he founded, or of being a software innovator with little to do apart from improve the product he had named. In 1997 his house in Milwaukee was broken into by council workers when neighbours complained about the stench and infestation. Rubbish, food, computer code, pornography and electronic equipment were piled up indiscriminately, and took three days to clear. Katz had moved out, and thereafter lived in his car and in motels. Katz was a painfully introverted man who lost touch with reality. At his death he was no longer actively involved in work on PKZIP. He is survived by his mother, at whose kitchen table PKZIP was conceived, and his sister.