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Comment by anonymousiam | Hacker News Reader

I knew that Phil drank himself to death, but I did not know the other tragic details of his life. It's silly that System Enhancement Associates sued him when they themselves had lifed the "LBR" archive format from CP/M, but greater examples of legal travesty exist in computer history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LBR_(file_format)

I still have a bought-and-paid-for 3.5" floppy disk of PKZip from PKWare. I am the only one I know who ever actually paid for it.

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>I still have a bought-and-paid-for 3.5" floppy disk of PKZip from PKWare. I am the only one I know who ever actually paid for it.

I had one too, and I held onto the floppy and the plastic folder it came in for years, until I finally trashed it in a decluttering frenzy. I think the version I registered was 1.10.

In the late 80s, I bought a perpetual license for PKZip, which I still have in a notebook somewhere. I used it to bundle my own shareware program. Of all the programs, theirs seemed like the one with the most shareware-friendly licensing scheme and user friendly unpacking process.

Stupidly, I sent my brother an encrypted ZIP file with my source code, and of course it's the only copy remaining, and of course I can't crack the password. I've tried some cracking programs.

Have you tried John The Ripper?

IIRC, ancient PKZip uses a very weak encryption algorithm that isn't well supported by modern cracking programs. If you're interested, though, I'd be happy to take a shot at it.

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