
The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000) - nbaksalyar
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/katzbio.txt
======
notdarkyet
Reading this sounds like a hit piece. I don't doubt he drank himself to death.
There is an embellishment of events and the author is writing from the
perspective as though they/he/she were there.

I am writing this after coming back from the bar with friends. I would
actually consider myself someone who drinks too much. I have written code for
years, tried and failed on over four startups. I have spent a week in a
hospital for suicide and depression. I currently work a cushy job where I make
great money and write code that a first year CS student could write.

This man was depressed. He tried to find outlets, self medicate, whatever the
garbage we need to say about his actions that we need to say. He needed help.
Rather than criticize his failures, lets make a note of how fragile our human
psyches are and work towards helping one another cope with our internal
battles.

~~~
mylons
I agree whole heartedly and have been to some of the places you have. One
thing I have noticed in some friends and acquaintances who've worked out of
depression is that they can attain this loftiness to themselves. They feel
superior to those who are where they once were. Once I saw that in real life,
I began to extrapolate it to a lot of the comments on the internet that tear
down the depressed. Somehow they lose their empathy along the way.

~~~
paganel
> They feel superior to those who are where they once were.

This is the thing I don't understand about these people. Once you've
experienced depression but somehow you did manage to "leave it behind" you
still have the feeling that's there, somewhere, hidden, and only the greatest
fool would make fun of it or of people still suffering from it.

~~~
llcoolv
It is very simple - depression is like cancer in a sense that it expands and
captures/modifies more and more reflexes, thought patterns, habits and other
aspects of personality. The single most important thing is to stop trying to
be accommodating and understanding to its effects (feeling sorry for
yourself), which is needed in order to increase locus of control[1]. Another
key part (which comes later) is to absolutely believe and be determined that
you're not depressed and that mistakes are just mistakes. So, take lack of
compassion and self-identification and you've got it. Still, being a bitter
cunt is zillion times better than getting hit by a tram, because you don't
care. Also, a lot of chicks just dig guys who are short on empathy, which is a
nice reward. And when need be, empathy is extremely easily faked, because
people are not very suspicious when they need it.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_self-
evaluations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_self-evaluations)

------
OldSchool
In contrast to the far overused sugary definition, Phil Katz really was a rock
star programmer. He also died a rock star's tragic and pathetic death.

There is probably no line between self and business for a guy like PK. At that
time you could build a significant program or even a game singlehandedly. Most
likely he obsessively made his better ARC program for its own reward (you
could use it for free) and he was surprised both by the commercial success and
the subsequent legal attack. Very personal indeed, and if he wasn't already a
completely tortured soul, that would be more than enough to take away any
shred of sense he had made of the world. Give enough cash and free time to
someone who has been cracked like that and he quite easily can end up dead
from an existential crisis with no practical boundaries.

Considering this was some 25 years ago now, if he thought about intellectual
property issues at all, the mindset at that time was very reasonable in that
your source code and executable was considered copyrightable like a book - it
didn't matter if it provided the same functionality as someone else's program
as long as you wrote the code. Just consider the fate of the original
spreadsheet for confirmation of this.

To summarize, before you take any stand against the tragedy that is the life
of PK, consider that there is probably a huge concentration of people very
much like the early Phil Katz right here on HN. The man simply needed help,
and he didn't get it.

------
fogleman
An interesting point of view I found via Google:

[http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html](http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html)

~~~
chebucto
This:

"In a negotiated settlement he again rejected any suggestion of licensing and
went for a cash-out settlement. He repaid us for most of our legal bills and
promised to stop selling his program sometime in 1988.

Then he fiddled with the file format a bit, renamed it from PKARC to PKZIP,
and kept right on selling it. "

is contradicted by this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Katz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Katz)

"... settlement of the lawsuit ... under which ... PKWARE paid SEA to obtain a
license that allowed the distribution of PKWARE's ARC-compatible programs
until January 31, 1989, after which PKWARE would not license, publish or
distribute any ARC compatible programs or utilities that process ARC
compatible files.

...

After the lawsuit, PKWARE released one last version of his PKARC and PKXARC
utilities under the new names "PKPAK" and "PKUNPAK", and from then on
concentrated on developing the separate programs PKZIP and PKUNZIP, which were
based on new and different file compression techniques."

Wiki also says

"The SEA vs. PKWARE dispute quickly expanded into one of the largest
controversies the BBS world ever saw."

Any greybeards care to comment?

~~~
micro-ram
I didn't care about the controversy I just remember re-packing all of my files
in .zip to save more space on my BBS.

Unfreezing...Melting....OOOO00000oooooo........

~~~
fleitz
That reminds me of ARJ, I have no memory of why, but I was a much bigger fan
of ARJ than zip.

~~~
reidrac
Me too. ARJ was easier to use IIRC, specially with muli-volume archives
(frequent if you had to split an archive into several diskettes).

I used ARJ mostly, until RAR came in, of course ;)

------
tdubhro1
"As soon as he started drinking, you could see a little smile on his face.
That's when he could talk to people, or tell a joke."

Coders in general are susceptible to alcohol for these kinds of reasons. Add
in flexi hours (hey it doesn't matter what time I show up as long as I ship
code, right?), and it's practically the ideal job for a functioning alcoholic.

I've seen dozens of fellow programmers slip down the slope. It's particularly
bad in the financial sector in London, where "trader culture" of hard
drinking, drugs and women is seen as acceptable. Usually it's well concealed
until early to mid-thirties. Often their situation rapidly degenerates after a
relationship breakup or family bereavement. What's fun and social when you're
with your friends in your 20s isn't so much when you're 35 and lonely.

It's striking how casual and uninformed the general attitude to this drug is
in our industry, e.g. [http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works-
creativity/](http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works-creativity/)

~~~
epo
Some personality types gravitate towards drug abuse and some types gravitate
towards programming as a primary activity. The overlap between the two sets is
very significant.

Add in money and a tendency to have few friends, and almost certainly no SO,
and the wonder is there aren't even more casualties. Though there are a huge
number of people who get older and wonder where exactly it all went wrong.

~~~
mtdewcmu
The other problem, apart from alcohol per se, was the fact that he never had a
smile on his face when sober. If alcohol wasn't available, he would still have
been tortured.

------
mynameishere
Well, a big text file isn't a documentary. Download this link for an actual
documentary on the subject:

[http://www.esva.net/~thom/arczip.wmv](http://www.esva.net/~thom/arczip.wmv)

The takeaway is that Katz optimized existing code, his mother ran the pkzip
business, they defamed the arczip guys, and Katz himself died a paranoid,
drunken wreck. The problem with the doc is that pretty much nobody is there to
defend Katz. It's an old war, and really doesn't matter now.

------
tptacek
This story might be a bit biased in favor of Katz. Read this take, too:

[http://www.esva.net/~thom/baker.html](http://www.esva.net/~thom/baker.html)

The team that owned ARC was even smaller than Katz's, and PKARC was based
_directly_ on ARC.

~~~
billmalarky
Whoa this line really stands out from the end of Thom Henderson's (creator of
ARC) take on Phil's death:

 _I can think of no more fitting epitath than the final clause of the original
ARC copyright statement:

"If you fail to abide by the terms of this license, then your conscience will
haunt you for the rest of your life."_

(Apparently PKARC was blatantly ripped off of ARC and Phil refused to license
ARC.)

~~~
Syssiphus
I recommend 'BBS - the Documentary' by Jason Scott, episode #8. It should be
available on YouTube. It is about the SEA vs. PKWARE controversy.

------
GuerraEarth
I logged in to read about CodeCombat. Instead, I read this submission. Mostly
because it was sitting there forlornly with no comments. Alcoholism is really
painful. It in no way lessens the excellence of the contribution of talented
people; it only makes us cherish them more. We just don't get to help often
because the destruction happens in a way that is inaccessible to outsiders.

------
benmathes
That's brutal, and hard to read, especially when I've experience shreds of
that loneliness, that unreasonable fear that you have nowhere and no one to go
to.

Each morning I read a note to myself: "The high score isn't money, it's people
who love you".

------
znowi
_Katz talked freer, laughed harder, stayed up longer and dreamed bigger when
he had a drink in his hand, friends say. Drinking brought a painfully shy man
out of his shell._

I wonder if alcohol served him as an unfortunate remedy for his introverted
person.

And on unrelated note:

 _He got real good at optimizing programs, and he learned to get the job done
with the least amount of instructions and running times._

I like the culture of code bumping back in the day. Although, we now live in a
time of abundant CPU cycles and memory, there's still value in that, even
above many layers of abstraction. Sadly, increasing number of programmers do
not care or even aware of their programs' resource footprint on the hardware.

~~~
xb95
Re: the remedy for introverts, yes.

I'm a strong introvert and I find that a few drinks makes me feel like what I
suspect an extrovert feels like. Personally, I'd much rather socialize with a
few drinks in me; and if there's a large group involved, it's almost mandatory
for me to enjoy myself at all!

------
npx
I thought this was incredibly sad. It reminded me of my best friend during
high school, who took his own life last year:

[http://www.desototimes.com/articles/2012/12/18/news/doc50cfc...](http://www.desototimes.com/articles/2012/12/18/news/doc50cfcc5fa011b913849634.txt)

The brightest of us are the hardest to reach and the most difficult to
persuade, but they're also the most painful to lose.

To anyone reading this: if someone that you care about needs help, don't wait
until tomorrow. Don't make excuses. Don't fuck around.

------
adamsrog
"I can think of no more fitting epitaph than the final clause of the original
ARC copyright statement: 'If you fail to abide by the terms of this license,
then your conscience will haunt you for the rest of your life.'"

Deep.

------
sac2171
Being young, I stumbled on PK Ware once while doing a task for a job. I
started inquiring about their service, and was slightly rude to a rep. The
conversation went something like...

Me: Why would I pay 40 dollars for zipping software I get for free? You guys
are totally late to the game, winzip and winrar already exist.

Rep: ....... Yea, we started the industry, and our founder died from alcohol
abuse...

Me: Good joke...

.......

It's a sad tale indeed.

------
ck2
Oh gosh, I didn't know he had died. This makes me very sad for some reason.

------
anovikov
Phil was my teenage icon. Maybe he wasn't such a great genius, but he did a
lot of money out of almost nothing, and never bothered himself much about
anything.

------
rbanffy
It's really sad to see someone bright self-destruct this way, but I _need_ to
say I found the exotic dancer's name, Chastity, almost funny.

------
mrcactu5
to me this is a glimpse of the computer world near 2000. the idea of file
compression just becoming popularized.

these days, every time a startup reaches an IPO, we get a movie, book or long
series of articles. we learn the guys revolutionizing social media are total
basketcases

------
mattmcegg
I used to work at PKWARE back in 2007-2010, and his legacy was rarely
discussed by everyone was well aware. Seemed like a bad ass to me.

