[softwarelist] Re: SparkFS 1.41b

  • From: Martin Wuerthner <public@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: davidpilling@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:59:00 +0100

In message <OF4E99BDF1.682F2D93-ON8025738E.00476FD5-8025738E.0047B150@ 
Research.Quantel>
          Andy.Ling@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>> More windows people are sending me .rar files (must be because WinZip is
>> cack or something).
>
> WinZip costs money .rar is free.

Who cares about WinZip nowadays? Windows has built-in .zip support so 
every user can create and open .zip files, whereas you need to install 
additional software in order to handle .rar files.

> To be fair, there are free applications that produce .zip files
> but they usually support .rar as well. The rar format is open and free

From what I read the exact opposite is true: The .rar format is 
proprietory and the compression algorithm is not even published. Only 
the decompression algorithm is published and there is an open source 
implementation for it that can be used by third parties.

So, that makes .rar a lot less open and less free than .zip.

> and can be more efficient, so I guess it is becoming more widespread.

Personally, I have yet to encounter a single .rar file.

Martin
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Martin Wuerthner          MW Software          martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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