Re: HTTP transfer errors

On 6/13/2011 9:50 PM, Nobody wrote:
On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:59:08 +0200, David Brown wrote:

RAR is indeed an odd format. It is not a free format - you can't make
an encoder for it. (I don't know what is non-free about it - perhaps
patents, copyrights, secret encodings, etc.)

Actually, I think it's just the author relying upon the "you may not
reverse-engineer the compression format" notice in the EULA being
enforceable (which is debatable).

This piqued my curiosity... I was *sure* I had seen a "rar" in the
pkgsrc repository!

So, I just took a peek. Yes, there's one there. But, it's a *binary*
port ("Sure, I'm going to let some foreign executable run on this
machine... *just* to give me another compressor? I don't think so...")

Plus: why bother? There are better compression algorithms out there. The
format only matters insofar as other people use it, and you can get free
decoders.

Yes, I noticed the unrar in pkgsrc is a source port. "OK, you can
execute. So, we can *decompress* your format, we just won't *use*
it!" :-/

Can you spell GIF?

(I'm sure *that* piece of IP made them BILLION$! -- Not!)
.