mdavis@pro-sol.cts.com (Morgan Davis) (09/05/90)
We're in a period of flux. It would be beneficial to us all, the users of file archiving tools, to let the Three Powers battle it out. As with all good competition, it only benefits us in the end. The price we pay is a period in time where there is some chaos as we evaluate and decide which technology is better. In the long run, this is a small price to pay, and bickering about is a waste of time, as well as unsportsmanlike. A wait-and-see attitude is going to go a lot farther in making the right choice about what kind of archiving format we're going to adopt in the future. A stodgy budge-for-nothing stick-with-the-familiar attitude is only going to mire you into the past. For a moment, consider if we never accepted StuffIt and were still using PackIt III today. Blech. I believe that the best technology will (and should) always prevail. Let's get the best/fastest compression format down first (let the Big Three figure that out). Later, we'll fret about which user interface is prettier. After all, what could be worse than StuffIt 1.5.1's interface? Also, consider how we continue to writhe in pain because of that awful period when we had to convert all our .pit archives to .sit. (Funny, I seem to have forgotten the pain, if there even was any). Old archives have a tendancy to roll off the edge of the online services anyway. Do you really think you'll be downloading programs posted to your favorite information service that were uploaded five years ago? With any significant frequency? Those worth keeping will be repacked and reposted. No big deal. Notice how I've not singled out any particular achiving product. I wish all three of the top competitors the best sporting chance. I hope the competition is fierce, as it will only help in churning out a better end product that we'll all eventually adopt (for a while anyway). As for proprietary formats, they'll stay a secret for only so long. Some whiz-kid will say, "I can't afford to by the Xyzzy compressor, but I'll bet I can figure out how it works." And we'll end up with a comparable, if not better/faster public domain product (full of bugs and a nasty user interface, of course), but eventually it will evolve as a major player, making the reigning commercial competitor shake in his boots. Hasn't it always worked that way? One last comment. The best file packers and archivers will always remain with the non-commercial developer. The cutting edge in archiving is not reserved for the commercial development houses. It never was. --Morgan Davis, President Morgan Davis Group UUCP: crash!pnet01!pro-sol!mdavis ProLine: mdavis@pro-sol ARPA: crash!pnet01!pro-sol!mdavis@nosc.mil MCI Mail: 137-6036 INET: mdavis@pro-sol.cts.com America Online, BIX: mdavis