Info-ZIP

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Zip
Developed by Info-ZIP
Latest release 2.32 / June 20, 2006
Preview release 3.0f / September 24, 2007
OS Cross-platform
Genre data compression
License BSD license
Website www.info-zip.org
UnZip
Developed by Info-ZIP
Latest release 5.52 / February 27, 2005
Preview release 6.0c / October 10, 2005
OS Cross-platform
Genre data decompression
License BSD license
Website www.info-zip.org

Info-ZIP is an open source version of Phil Katz's "deflate" and "inflate" routines used in his popular file compression program, PKZIP. The free code released by the Info-ZIP project under a BSD license spawned a horde of PKZIP imitators (WinZip, PicoZip, PowerArchiver, Turbozip, PowerZip and many more), establishing the PKZIP file format as a de facto industry standard.

The first version of what would become Info-ZIP was published by Samuel Smith in March 1989, complete with the source code in both Pascal and C forms. In September he released 2.0, including support for the new "implode" method that had been added to PKZIP 1.01. A port to Unix was released by Carl Mascott and John Cowan in December.

In March 1990 a number of interested parties set up a mail list on a disused DEC-20 mainframe at the White Sands Missile Range, agreeing to form a group to clean up the code and make it officially public. In May the first version of this code was released, as Info-ZIP 3.0.

In 1994 and 1995 Info-ZIP turned a corner, and effectively became the de facto ZIP program. A huge number of ports were released that year, including numerous minicomputers, mainframes and practically every microcomputer ever developed. All the while the software had continued to add support for newer compression systems being added to PKZIP, eventually this happened so quickly that there was no reason to use PKZIP. It was also in 1995 that the principal maintainers start to work heavily on the PNG format, and changes to Info-ZIP slowed.

In addition to its command-line "Zip" and "UnZip" programs, Info-ZIP also produces a GUI frontend for Windows called "WiZ".

The "zip" and "unzip" programs included with most Linux and Unix distributions are Info-ZIP's Zip and Unzip programs.

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