![[Info-ZIP]](images/InfoZIP-gold2.png)
LATEST RELEASES: Zip 3.00 was released on 7 July 2008. WiZ 5.03 was released on 11 March 2005. UnZip 5.52 was released on 27 February 2005. MacZip 1.06 was released on 22 February 2001. See the Zip, UnZip and WiZ pages for current status and download locations.In addition, a new set of discussion forums was set up in October 2007. These replace the older QuickTopic forum, which was overrun by spam. (The spam postings have since been deleted, but further posts to the old forum are permanently disabled.)
Info-ZIP is a diverse, Internet-based workgroup of about 20 primary authors and over one hundred beta-testers, formed in 1990 as a mailing list hosted by Keith Petersen on the original SimTel site at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Info-ZIP's purpose is to provide free, portable, high-quality versions of the Zip and UnZip compressor-archiver utilities that are compatible with the DOS-based PKZIP by PKWARE, Inc.
Info-ZIP supports hardware from microcomputers all the way up to Cray supercomputers, running on almost all versions of Unix, VMS, OS/2, Windows 9x/NT/etc. (a.k.a. Win32), Windows 3.x, Windows CE, MS-DOS, AmigaDOS, Atari TOS, Acorn RISC OS, BeOS, Mac OS, SMS/QDOS, MVS and OS/390 OE, VM/CMS, FlexOS, Tandem NSK and Human68K (Japanese). There is also some (old) support for LynxOS, TOPS-20, AOS/VS and Novell NLMs. Shared libraries (DLLs) are available for Unix, OS/2, Win32 and Win16, and graphical interfaces are available for Win32, Win16, WinCE and Mac OS.
Info-ZIP code has been incorporated into a number of third-party products as well, both commercial and freeware. Some of the more interesting ones (well, historically speaking) include the use of UnZip code in the unzip.dll distributed with IBM's OS/2 Warp BonusPak and WebExplorer, as part of the reinstallation code for the IBM Aptivas preloaded with OS/2 Warp, and as part of IBM's Infoprint product. Sun used Info-ZIP's self-extractor to distribute the NT version of their HotJava browser, Novell uses UnZip for NetWare 6 installation, and SAP includes it in Business One. Various Windows products such as WinZip and the DynaZIP DLLs incorporate Info-ZIP code, too. And let us not forget Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), an excellent encryption program that uses Info-ZIP code as a first step in encrypting files. Info-ZIP's primary compression engine has also been spun off into the free zlib compression library, used in Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox, the Linux kernel, Windows, Java, virtually all PNG-supporting software, and countless other products.
Info-ZIP can be reached by a web-based form, but you'll have to read our Frequently Asked Questions page to find out how. Our two primary web sites are hosted by our very own Hunter Goatley and by the most excellent SourceForge. Secondary distribution sites are hosted by the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network.
![[UnZip icon]](images/zip-32-40t.png){kind=small}
UnZip -
for extracting and viewing files in .zip archives. Also
includes:
Zip -
a compressor/archiver for creating and modifying zipfiles. Also
includes:
WiZ -
a combination Zip/UnZip graphical front end for Windows platforms.
MacZip -
a combination Zip/UnZip graphical front end for Mac OS.
The core Info-ZIP group consists of programmers from six countries on three continents:
If you're brave enough, you can check out the Info-ZIP Rogue's Gallery and see what some of us (used to) look like. It's fairly hideous.
Former members of the core Info-ZIP group (i.e., those who no longer even pretend to be active) include:
In addition, Info-ZIP would like to tip our collective hat to
Samuel H. Smith, the
gentleman who wrote the original MS-DOS unzip on which Info-ZIP's
UnZip 3.0 was based--and who kindly made the source code available
for free. Even though virtually all of his code has by now been rewritten
from scratch, Info-ZIP still owes Mr. Smith a debt of gratitude for getting
us into this mess. A package of virtual chocolate-chip cookies is in the
e-mail.
