Talk:Phil Katz

message: I have restored the Thom Henderson link.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a fan club.  Sometimes that means that when people have said nasty things about each other, we discuss or link to that, as long as said things aren't libelous or demonstrably false.  Thom Henderson's perspective on Phil Katz is nearly unique, having come into direct legal conflict with him, and his perspective is clearly relevant.  Last time I checked, "rude" wasn't a reason not to link to a primary or secondary source. Nandesuka 13:16, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm really not a fan of Katz.  However, links must cater a certain standard, at least as far as their seriousness is concerned.  The motivation of Henderson's text is not the will to inform us but to have an outlet for his hatred.  I have nothing, really nothing against a critical text about Katz; equally I have nothing against a non-NPOV article being linked.  However, Henderson's text is the *opposite* of NPOV, which puts its credibility in question.  Besides, it doesn' add significant facts to the other sources.  Other opinions are welcome. – Torsten Bronger 15:11, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course Henderson's text is POV, thats WHY we link to it. It's a primary source and vital for researchers and historians, it along side the obituary and the documentary are the most vital. It has been cited it shouldnt be in there because of "bad taste" that is in itself POV and a form of censorship, I will stick it back in. - UnlimitedAccess 13:46, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Censorship.  I don't think that word means what you think it means.  Thom's little rant has no informaiton that the video with Thom breaking down to tears when he remembered how the BBS community hated him for the anti-Katz lawsuit has.  Samboy 07:44, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As Thom's rant *does* have significant bearing on the matter, regardless of its POV,I would suggest that merely linking to it (with a suitable POV warning/disclaimer). He's a primary source; perhaps one of dubious reliability, but he offers first-hand accounts that nobody else retains.  The video of Thom breaking down to tears probably isn't NPOV, but it documents his devastation in ways that text can not. True, false, or muddy, I think the link retains historical value, and should stay. Text explaining "this is  potentially biased information, don't rely on it." may also work. Raduga 01:21, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: On the other hand, they both link to essentially the same content, and the text rant links to the video.  Would you be happy if we replaced the Video link with the Text link, since that links to more content than the Video alone? I still support linking to content from Thom's site, though we may not need multiple links to the same material. Raduga 01:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thom Henderson Link 

message: obviously they are still going and obviously they aren't owned by katz anymore, i had a quick look at their site and it doesn't say anything obvious about what type of company they are.
so does anyone have any information on what pkware is today and how they became that? Plugwash 21:34, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  what happened to pkware? 

message: I think Phil Katz graduated from UW-Milwaukee not UW-Madison. Two of the external links verify that. Miaers 22:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: UW-Milwaukee or UW-Madison

message: BEGIN SIDE NOTE This is not my recollection of what happened. As I recall SEA claimed that Katz had no right under copyright laws, 1) to have his PK software write a file using the .ARC file-structure and format; and 2) to copy or mimic the "..look and feel.." of ARC. This created an outrage among the software users who abandoned use of SEA software in protest. This was discussed extensively on various FidoNet groups in the mid to late 1980s. I do not recall any mention of pirated source code and am highly skeptical of that allegation. See <http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/> for more information. In particular, see <http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/sea.txt> -vpd 10/14/07 END SIDE NOTE
:This was added to the article text, but it seemed relevant to discussion. — wfaulk 19:09, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes from 216.180.75.210 removed from article text 

message: Does anyone have any evidence or documented report on this? It's not exactly a pleasant thing to say about him. It may well be true, but I think there should be a weasel words warning here. --193.130.175.129 (talk) 12:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: From what I've read, it sounds like a fair statement.  He hadn't seen Chastity Fischer since 1999, or at least 7 months before his death, and I haven't seen any reports of other friends, although I'm sure she still cared about him, as did others.  (talk) 13:48, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I was just re-reading an article and realized I was wrong.  Chastity last saw Phil just a few weeks before his death.  She was reportedly a wonderful friend even at that time.  Mcavic (talk) 02:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Hell, I cared about the guy.  His company took my call when I was at the FDA and he personally called me back with a fix to his pkzip program that had a bug that prevented you from unzipping password protected files.  RIP Phil Katz.-G (talk) 15:16, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Reported that he died with no friends remaining" 

message: It's probably not obvious to the novice reader how the ZIP format became part of Windows.Landroo (talk) 12:54, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: What do you mean? ZIP is used by Macs too. --Orange Mike  |  Talk 12:41, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I think they mean native support? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 05:09, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Windows didn't achieve native ZIP support until XP.  I'd be interested to know if PKWare was paid for this, and how much.  Mcavic (talk) 13:51, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Windows had native ZIP files in Windows Me, actually. http://www.windowsnetworking.com/j_helmig/winmezip.htm It was called "Compressed Folders" and it was an optional component. Back then, Microsoft was a little less pushy and unlike the garbage that they were using to destroy companies with like Internet Explorer, some things didn't actually have to be installed. (IE/Trident could be removed too, just not officially.) Microsoft gotta Microsoft, so of course it had a horrendous and completely stupid security vulnerability. It saved your encrypted ZIP passwords in a plaintext log file on the hard drive every time you made a password protected ZIP file. https://download.cnet.com/Windows-Me-Exposed-Passwords-in-Compressed-Files-Vulnerability-Patch/3000-2092_4-10058010.html Daemonfc (talk) 00:19, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  .ZIP format in Windows? 

message: :Image:Phillip Katz.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is  other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page.  Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
BetacommandBot (talk) 14:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Phillip Katz.jpg

message: I rated this article in its current form as "Start" class. Some thoughts for improvement:
* Did Katz have any other notable contributions to software other than PKZip? (I honestly don't know.)
* Needs more about the business side of PKZip. (From what the article currently says, one could infer he simply wrote the utility one day, & it magically appeared in the hands of computer users across the world. I was a registered user of PKZip back in the early 1990s, & *I* don't have any idea of how it was originally marketed -- beyond the fact I received my first copy from a co-worker one day.)
* What happened to his company after his death? Was there any legal fighting over the rights & profits? (There is nothing in the article about this, & successful businesses have this way of attracting quarrelsome people who want a piece of the action.)
* More needs to be said about his personal life. I'm not looking for gritty details of his life, just trying to understand how a guy who had written such a successful program let his life spin out of control. (Was it mental issues? Personal tragedy? Shyness? -- Yes, that can be a problem for introverts! -- Rock star syndrome?)
In short, one could probably write a very fascinating book on the life of this gifted, but troubled, individual. The Wikipedia article should serve as an introduction to this hypothetical work. -- llywrch (talk) 15:43, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Re: personal life -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/katzbio.txt) has some speculation on the reasons: shyness, death of father at a fairly young age (he was 55, Phil Katz was 18 or 19 years of age at the time), estranged from his mother due to disputes over money and company ownership, paranoia over legal warrants. Tunkki-1970 (talk) 02:36, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rating thoughts

message: Footnote #1 in the article is now pointing to a dead link.  PKWare has evidently removed the Phil-Katz page from their website.  However, I can get to the page through archive.org at this link:  http://web.archive.org/web/20101001181829/http://www.pkware.com/about-us/phil-katz .  I don't know how to change the footnote to be in compliance with Wikipedia standards, so if anyone reading this knows how to change the footnote so it takes someone to PKWare's old page on archive.org, I'd appreciate if you would do that.  Thanks.  Furchild (talk) 03:39, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken footnote 

message: The cause of death is cited as "chronic alcoholism", but other Wiki languages have "accute alcoholism", and so has text I googled that seems copied from an older version of the article. Unfortunately, the two links point to a 404 and a paywall, so I can't check the original cause (also can't find on Google). Jalwikip (talk) 11:56, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The archived Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article (dated 21 May 2000) in the external links section says "acute pancreatic bleeding caused by chronic alcoholism", which agrees with the article. --Zundark (talk) 16:20, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cause of death