
The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000) - sanimal
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/katzbio.txt
======
blinkingled
For some people conscious existence is too burdensome, uncomfortable, full of
anxiety, outright maddening or some combination thereof. You see this in
everyday life too, albeit in benign quantities - watch a kid after you tell
him he can do nothing for the next hour.

I had read Phil Katz's story before and I read it again today - it wasn't any
less painful the second time around. I think if we were to debug it - there
doesn't seem to be any one unmistakable conclusion, rather a combination. It
would all depend on how severely one reacts to their emotional trauma. Some
people are numbed, some are able to move on, some find healthy diversions in
hobbies, people, achievements and some like Phil just plain fail to function
well and have to resort to drugs and alcohol in order to run away from the
living nightmare. I think at some point existence becomes rather more painful
than death for some - that's the only way you're able to kill yourself without
regard.

Humans are puzzling as a species - all the years of conditioning, the everyday
conflicts and contradictions we have to face, the constant need for asserting
our existence through external means, the need for relations, the child/parent
and then spouse systems and all the things that can go wrong with them, all
the other uncertainties - amazingly many live through this but some just can't
escape the dread.

~~~
babbeloski
> For some people conscious existence is too burdensome, uncomfortable, full
> of anxiety, outright maddening or some combination thereof.

Reading this gives me immediate anxiety. I have times during the day where
just seeing things and being alive is almost unreal, like I can't deal with,
and the thought of doing this for N number of years more is overwhelming. As
I'm getting older life is just even more surreal, I sometimes wonder if I have
the mental fortitude to make it to old age. This isn't a cry for help, you
just touched a nerve with that sentence.

~~~
iampherocity
Phew, I'm not alone. Word for word, to the letter.

~~~
eternalban
Probably more common than you think.

One old saw has it that when a man is starving he forgets even the urgent
promptings of a full bladder. A newer old saw claims that religion is the
opiate of the masses (with its uncoined analog regarding fetishism & the
ruling classes).

The quoted OP railed against wasted time and effort, but his views on the
despiritualization of the modern man are not clear. A non contemporary would
likely diagnose a 'spiritual crisis' for the existential angst of the uncommon
non-aristocratic unbelieving modern man.

------
labrador
I'm not knocking anyone that talks about emotional pain as a reason to drink,
but I want to offer an alternative theory alcoholism based on my experience.
Many if not most people have settled on the theory of escape from a painful
existence as an explanation, including many alcoholics. I've been battling
alcohol since I was a teenager and now I'm almost 60. I've been in and out of
rehab, lots of therapy and psychiatry, lots of sober time, a family with grown
kids, a successful career and yet my most recent relapse almost killed me.
More on that at the end.

Alcoholism is beyond thought and emotion. It operates at another level. It
takes Kings and Queens. It takes happy family men, while often skipping abused
children who grow up to be unhappy adults that can't hold a family together.
It takes spiritual and religious leaders such as Alan Watts. The list of
great, productive and seemingly happy people who are destroyed by alcohol is a
long one. My theory is that is a genetic glitch that allows alcohol to get
hooked into the autonomic nervous system. It's telling in "Leaving Las Vegas"
a woman tells Cage's character to quit drinking and he replies "why don't you
tell me to stop breathing?" Carl Sagan liked to talk about our reptilian
brain. That's the way I look at it. When the lizard brain wants a drink, it's
going to get a drink. Luckily for me, it's not all the time. The urge comes
and goes (sometimes for years.) The gene seems to run in families. If it is
cured, my bet it will be through genetic therapy.

I'm not saying that resolving emotional issues doesn't make it easier to stay
sober. Many things make it easier to stay sober. Sometimes I just go somewhere
where I can't get it. That helps. It's why a lot of guys stay in the Navy.
They have productive sober time at sea. Finding other activities and
diversions certainly help. I like to program. I've often stayed sober by
programming.

My last relapse almost killed me because I'm finding as I have become older,
my ability to fight it is greatly weakened. On top of that, I go into a
trance-like state where I stay I will stay drunk for days and weeks at a time
unless someone who knows me intervenes. That is terrible on the body and as
the body weakens, the ability to resist weakens. The downward spiral can be
quick and brutal.

~~~
Mtinie
You aren't alone. Should you ever want to chat/commiserate/pair program, you
can contact me through my HN account.

I don't have it all, though I have a lot, but I still find myself continuously
drawn to a side that defies my own logic. I both glad and saddened to hear
that I'm not alone.

~~~
labrador
Thanks. You are not alone. I meet people like me in AA and get coffee with
them. I don't go now because I don't believe the program as designed actually
works, at least for me. I also wasn't making connections at my favorite
meeting. I may try another.

~~~
zafka
If you would like, contact me via my email. I think we have some issues in
common.

------
shortformblog
One of the most heartbreaking stories of of the tech world, and one that comes
with a lot of bad blood. Be sure to watch Jason Scott's documentary clip on
the ARC vs PKARC battle:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiaM5MT1Ok8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiaM5MT1Ok8)

I admit that I've always wondered what a dramatic film based on this story
would look like. It has all of the highs and lows of a movie, and it would be
worth retelling for both the lessons it has to teach but also the important
role in computer history Katz held.

~~~
zznneezznnee
Thanks for sharing this link, in lieu of watching that I wouldn't have had any
idea Phil stole SEA's code to create pkarc/pkzip.

I still remember running the self-extracting pkz204g.exe on MS-DOS, and never
heard of SEA or encountered their software. That's really unfortunate.

~~~
shortformblog
I don't disagree with you on this, but I just want to clarify something: Katz
ripped off ARC, that much is clear. But on the other hand, ZIP was a brand-new
format that had some differences from ARC. Among those differences is that
Katz made the format open, something SEA hadn't done with ARC. This helped
ensure its broad uptake as a de facto standard that's still used to this day.

I don't think what Katz did in SEA saga is worth defending, but I think we
have to delineate the two formats. As Phil Becker of eSoft says in the clip,
the reason that Katz's software ultimately won out was that he was more adept
as a businessman—and the open nature of the ZIP format was a good example of
that.

~~~
derekp7
Don't forget, that this was also in the middle of the various look-and-feel
lawsuits that were going on at the time. Lotus vs. Paperback Software, Lotus
vs. Borland, Apple vs. Microsoft, Stac Electronics vs. Microsoft, etc.

Also, remember that PKarc was popular because it was faster than Arc. The
feeling in the BBS community at the time were feeling a bit of rage, that a
superior product was being killed through the courts. So when PKzip came out,
which was not only faster, but had a better compression ratio, combined with
the general sentiment in the community that were fed up with look-and-feel
lawsuits, doing a mass conversion from arc to zip was also a form of public
protest.

------
maxander
A tragic tale, and a reminder that intelligence and business success are no
replacement for mental health.

Even in the BBC's account, the tone of the writing seems to present a lot of
warning signs and developing problems as just a genius' wacky eccentricities.
If you require substances in order to function, can't maintain social
relationships or struggle with harmful lifestyles, these aren't mere character
traits, they're symptoms of real and treatable illnesses. Presenting these
things as "the dark side of being smart" is a popular story, but its harmful
in the long run.

~~~
pcl
The article is not affiliated with the BBC -- it's published on
bbsdocumentaries.com.

~~~
maxander
Oops, good catch- one letter makes a substantial difference!

Should have wondered why a BBC documentary was being presented in plaintext
format, anyway...

------
jdeibele
The article kind of glosses over the battle with System Enhancement
Associates. As a sysop (long time since I used that word), ARC was extremely
popular. Then PKarc came out and it generated files that were more compact but
kept the extension .ARC. SEA's product couldn't unpack those. So their product
got the reputation as the one that didn't work.

The lawsuit was extremely unpopular given that they were both shareware
products and the older, more established company was suing the company with a
better product.

It wasn't clear now or then what else SEA could have done.

~~~
msandford
Couldn't they have just made him an offer too good to refuse to buy PKarc? I
haven't read up on the background so perhaps they already tried this. But it
seems like that's the "big company" playbook. At least if you're substantially
bigger than your competitor.

~~~
jdeibele
There are some programmers on Hacker News who probably are paid more than I'm
guessing both companies combined made. As I remember it (could be wrong now),
SEA was two programmers and PKWare was Phil Katz (and his mom).

"The leaked agreement document revealed that under the settlement terms, the
defendants had paid the plaintiff $22,500 for past royalty payments and
$40,000 for expense reimbursements."

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

~~~
mysterypie
I was about to say the same thing. For all the hard work, risks, stress, and
high drama involved, we're talking about fairly trivial amounts of money for
both parties.

To put it in perspective, the royalty payment that constitutes the settlement
is less than what the most people pay for a new car or the average cost of a
wedding in the U.S.

Given the leaked documents about the settlement (per Wikipedia) and knowing
what most people pay for shareware (which is zero), I doubt the article's
claim that Katz had a "multimillion-dollar company". This makes his struggles
and story even sadder.

------
babbage12
I just lost my best mate from university to alcohol. Growing up in Britain,
this is not my first friend I've lost because of alcohol. I'm in tears... I've
struggled with drinking too much myself, this hits very close to home.

~~~
PaulRobinson
As somebody who has watched people struggle and seen them fail and succeed, I
can relate. Also a Brit, also like a pint. Helped people who were hitting the
alcho-pops at 8am (doesn't smell like booze on the breath, see?).

I'm p7r on twitter and reddit. If you ever want to chat, let me know, I'll
follow you back, we can DM, or just PM me on reddit. It's a sincere offer: I
hope in the morning you're feeling more optimistic and know you're not alone
and there are people who give a fuck.

The things that make us able to do amazing things are also the things that
make us do terrible things to ourselves. We should talk about that more as a
community.

~~~
icantdrive55
I've stopped and failed drinking too many times to count.

My psychiatrist told me flat out, "Don't even try to stop on you're own. It's
just too f---ing dangerous." I used that terrible advice for years. I kept on
drinking.

I went to A.A., and just coudn't stomach it, on so many levels.

I wasen't going to spend my last $15 grand on a expensive rehab.

I did taper off around ten years ago. It took a few weeks. I knew it would be
dangerous to just stop. I did everything the experts told me not to do; like
have alcohol around the house, and hang around people who drink.

We all drink for different reasons. I felt I was drinking to control my
anxiety; and much of the time I was self-medicating. I tapered down to a few
drinks a day--I finally got down to one, or no drinks.

My point is if anyone reading this is trying to stop drinking, and the status
quo advice just isn't working, if I could taped down, I honestly think most
people can.

(Try not to drink hard alcohol. That really did a number on my body. When I
went back to wine, and beer; It was only then could I begin to even think
about tapering down to no drinks. I'm not giving advice. I'm just stating what
worked for me. I really thought I was hopeless. My father, and grandfather
both died from liver tumors that metastasized into cancer. Both were big
drinkers. I didn't think I had a chance in hell. Plus--I had a nervous
breakdown in graduate school, which turned into generalized anxiety. I still
drink, but it's not much. I'm not the bloated mess I used to be. My life is
still not great, but it's not due to alcohol.)

------
smarks
Very sad story. The guy's initials are immortalized in the magic number of the
zip file format, the bytes of which are

    
    
        0x50 0x4b 0x03 0x04
    

The values 0x50 0x4b are 'P' 'K' in ASCII.

Note also that every Java JAR file is also a ZIP file, so they all begin with
the same magic number.

~~~
WalterBright
Windows executables start with "MZ", for Mark Zbikowski.

Edit: fixed the name

~~~
uiri
I tried googling this but nothing came up until I stumbled across
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_MZ_executable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_MZ_executable)
which says it stands for _Mark Zbikowski_ (which is supported by a quick
Google of that name).

~~~
WalterBright
You're right, I mis-remembered it. Thanks for the correction!

------
throwitaway83
As someone who is in recovery, this story always hits close to home. The
anxiety, guilt, and paranoia that comes with addiction is brutal. I was on the
verge on losing everything including two young daughters. What a fucking
horrible disease.

------
ino
I remember reading this a few years ago, and it touched me as it is touching
me now again.

I don't remember computers without pkzip/pkunzip. They've always been around,
many copies on floppies containing games and other software, maybe just in
case someone ever found a computer without them.

My school computers also had them, and we quickly learned there wasn't any
benifit of compressing a compressed file. We had pointless discussions about
comparisons with arj and rar without even knowing how they worked.

------
orionblastar
I lost sone friends the same way, alcoholism and mental illnesses seem to be
common in my generation. I lost my best friend in 1999 when he bought a
shotgun and ended his life. I tried to do all I could to help him but he shut
me and everyone out for months until he killed himself.

I've been suicidal myself. It is something not talked out, but it needs to be
talked about eventually. Suicide is taking some of the best out of this
industry and stress and depression and anxiety mixed with drugs and/or alcohol
can lead to these weird behaviors and then suicide unless they are lucky
enough to get professional help and the right psychiatrist and medicine and
therapy.

I'm on disability and can't work yet, and I have to learn how to program all
over again with different languages as what I know is so outdated except for
theories.

------
wallflower
> But even as Windows-based "zip" products nibbled into PKWare's sales

Anyone remember Niko Mak? I heard whisper numbers back in the late 90s of high
six figure monthly licensing revenue from companies that were desperate to
remain BSA legal (their employees downloaded WinZip for personal use and
exposed businesses to legal liability for using unlicensed software). He seems
to have disappeared, as he rightly deserves. I assume he changed his name and
lives on a private island. I still get WinZip marketing spam on my old email
account. Last I remember, they were at version 67...

------
mwcampbell
I wonder how he would have reacted if he had lived to see the integration of
his ZIP file format into Windows itself, starting with Windows XP in 2001.

~~~
cuckcuckspruce
I don't think he'd have a problem with it considering he released the
specification for the Zip format freely[1].

[1]
[https://pkware.cachefly.net/webdocs/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT](https://pkware.cachefly.net/webdocs/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT)

------
isuckatcoding
Wow that was difficult to read. Not that I'm an alcoholic but I can relate to
some of the things he was going through.

~~~
imdsm
Yeah, read it about 3 or 4 times now, and it always seems to be late at night
(UK here) when I read it. Here I am, while my family sleeps, working away in
the quiet solitude of night. Luckily though, I'm drinking tea, not alcohol.

------
dispose13432
Off topic, but what was so special about the "zip" file over a ".tar.Z" file,
especially that it already existed when ZIP came out?

~~~
duskwuff
\- It had a table of contents. You can list the contents of a ZIP file, or
even extract individual files, without having to decompress the whole thing.
(Which was a particularly big deal back in the 90s, when extracting a large
archive would take a while.)

\- You could update an archive in place. Not incredibly useful, but certainly
nifty.

\- It had support for multi-disk archives. Again, big deal in the 90s.

Finally, last but not least: it existed in the PC world. Ports of software
between UNIX and PC systems were rare back then, and were made more difficult
by the fact that the software would have to run in a segmented (16-bit) x86
environment.

~~~
dguaraglia
This is the perfect answer. The fact that you could split zip files across
several diskettes was _huge_.

------
aryehof
A sad outcome. I will more remember Phil Katz for brazenly copying SEA code to
create the basis for his initial success - PKARC. His greatest achievement in
my opinion was succeeding in convincing a whole community of programmers, that
he was the victim, and not "evil" SEA.

------
burger_moon
Wow this is the first time I've heard this story or heard of Phil Katz. I grew
up in Milwaukee and went to UWM as well so the familiarities about hearing
about someone like Phil is pretty incredible and sad.

------
dispose13432
Also, as far as I know the ZIP file format wasn't patented.

~~~
transitorykris
File format no, compression yes
[https://www.google.com/patents/US5051745](https://www.google.com/patents/US5051745)

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

------
boot13
Literally the first letter of this is a typo. Sad story though.

------
milesf
Because this is an old post and not someone who is recently deceased, I do not
feel what I am about to say is in poor taste.

I don't want to see the idea of the loner computer hacker be idealized any
longer. Mr Robot, while a clever and more accurate representation of tech than
its predecessors, still leans on the troubled genius trope. My main gripe is
how software developers are dehumanized into masochistic agents of hyper
productivity. It's unhealthy, it's exploitive, and it's simply not true.

Silicon Valley loves stories like Phil Katz because it gives them a pass to
treat up-and-coming coders horribly. 90+ hour workweeks, death marches, and
insane deadlines not only leads to burnout, it results in poor work.

Longevity and balance and much more noble pursuits in the tech world. As DHH
used to say, put away the Superman cape. We don't need heroics, we need sane,
well-rested creatives who enjoy their work. If you want real heroes, look at
men & women who are in their 70's and 80's who are still banging out lines of
code.

~~~
PaulRobinson
Katz's story is perhaps actually an antidote to that: he worked crazy hours
much of the time, and ended up dead at 37.

What's interesting for me is that many geeks I've worked with have real issues
in some regard, in a way that non-geeks seem to find a way to make
entertaining (IT Crowd, Big Bang Theory), or simply think is disturbingly sad
(the loner in the basement stereotype).

The truth is the things that make us great geeks can also make us a little
self-destructive, and we should probably as a community talk about that some
more.

Spending your formative years as an outsider and then finding yourself as an
adult a highly in-demand insider is potentially damaging. It's compounded when
- as many of us do - we realise that social anxiety can dissipate with alcohol
and use of other drugs.

We've all watched it. Some of us have done it. We need to be a bit more open
about discussing it, I think.

Thinking about going first and writing a blog this weekend, but man, it'll be
emotionally raw for me, and possibly cringe-inducing for others...

~~~
intransigent
I definitely get the sense that this was a situation where a guy made too much
money way too fast. Like almost overnight.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like he had been pent up, and when an
effectively unlimited budget reared its head, it open the floodgates for so
many bottled up urges.

By the time he had graduated to drunk driving convictions, other habits had
been so firmly established that he was never going back to his old life.

It reads like a medical study of addiction models in animals. When granted
unlimited push-button access to an addictive stimulus they push the button
compulsively, without stopping and kill themselves from sheer lack of self
control.

And about that writing of the tell-all cringe blog. I'd reconsider if I were
you. Definitely do some writing. Write on paper. Not on a computer. Not on the
internet. Lock it away, and then proof read it when you're in the best
possible mood, and try to imagine how it would change your mood to realize
others had read it, and cringed over it.

------
horatiocain
Jesus fucking Christ

------
Animats
Short version: alcohol.

~~~
andrewguenther
I think that's a bit of an insensitive summary.

~~~
cgvgffyv
Seems to be what all commenters above are focusing on though.

(and thus completely miss the point)

------
estrabd
Always a good cautionary tail.

