ALZip wiki

From Software Informer

ALZip

ALZip v6.32 Running under Windows XP
Developed by	ESTsoft
Initial release	?
Written in	?
Operating system	Windows
Available in	English,Korean
Type	File archiver
License	Proprietary
Website	www.altools.net

ALZip is an archive and compression utility from ESTsoft for Microsoft Windows.

[edit] History

Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in WinZip. While several potential names for the new software were considered, ALZip won out. The other top contending name was 'HanZip', while 'DdongZip' (roughly translated as 'PoopZip') was thrown out for obvious reasons. The Korean interface was immediately well received^[1] and later that year ALZip was publicly released^[2][3][4] as freeware^[5]. In just over a year ALZip became the most popular zip program in Korea^[6] and by December 2001 was the top downloaded software^[7][8] in the country. By 2004 it had reached a 70% market share in South Korea^[9] . The popularity of the software and the ALZ archive format^[10] played a large role in earning ESTsoft a place in the Digital Innovation Awards Top 100 Companies in South Korea^[11] with the software taking special mention. Early in its development ALZip introduced the ALZ file format to deal with file size limitations of the ZIP file format. ALZ compression has no theoretical upper limit for file sizes and ALZ files are only limited by operating system file size limits or the amount of available storage. ALZ files are common in Korea. Demand for additional features fueled further development of the software and in October 2001 ALZip changed from pure freeware to free for home use, with government usage requiring a software license. In April 2002^[12], commercial usage^[13] was added as also requiring a license. Licensing is all on the honor system. There are no nag screens in ALZip. In 2002, the program was released in English at www.alzip.com, but was moved to www.altools.net in 2004 when more applications were added to the list of ALTools available in English. Since then, support for over 20 languages has been added. With version 7, the license was changed from freeware to adware, displaying downloaded banner ads to display in all different places within the program. From 1^st December 2008 all users must have a paid licence for products released after that date.^[14]

[edit] The ALTools Eggheads

The interface features the cartoon ALZip Egghead animated in the main toolbar in various poses to represent the various functions available there, and for which the application is named. The AL part in ALZip is a transliteration from the Korean, '알집', which directly translates as EggZip. The name is in part a pun, the pronunciation of "ALZip" meaning egg shell in Korean. Other ALTools feature similar egghead cartoon characters as mascots for each program. An additional feature in ALZip that adds a "New Folder" icon to the top of the Windows Explorer context menu reads '새폴더' in Korean which is a homonym meaning either "Bird Folder" or "New Folder". Suitably, new folders created with the option keep with the egg motif and have bird names^[15].

[edit] Controversy

Although ALZip is popular in Korea, some people in KoreaCategory:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases since March 2009^[who?] argue that:

1. The ALZ format is completely closed, because ESTSoft is not supporting any available library module for other archiver software, as ESTSoft’s intention of introducing the ALZ format was to force users to use the ALZip archiver when decompressing the ALZ files. Currently, other popular archive formats, like 7z or RAR can be supported by other archiver software by the means of DLL libraries released by original developers. Korean archivers supporting this ALZ format (except ALZip itself), like BreadZip, Tzip, or SoolZip, have their own decompression algorithms, personally analyzed by those developers.
2. The ALZ format is basically a result of copyright infringement, since it was revealed by numerous experts when they tried to analyze the ALZ format, that ESTSoft stole the open-source bz2 file format, and modified the header to disguise its identity, to create the ALZ file format. In short, ALZ archives are basically bz2 archives, with modified header data (this is verified up to version 4.9. Starting from version 5.0, the ALZ format is known to use the DEFLATE algorithm).

[edit] References

[edit] See also

Comparison of file archivers