ALZip is an

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

and

compression Compression may refer to: Physical science *Compression (physics), size reduction due to forces *Compression member, a structural element such as a column *Compressibility, susceptibility to compression *Gas compression *Compression ratio, of a c ...

utility from

ESTsoft Founded in 1993, ESTsoft is a South Korean application software development company. Its software ranges from desktop to business software for enterprises. Products There are several products marketed under the "ALTools" product line. In Korea, ...

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. ALZip is a file compression program that can unzip 40 different zip file archives. ALZip can zip files into 8 different archives such as ZIP, EGG, TAR and others. Since ALZip version 8, the newly developed

EGG An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

format can be used, which supports Unicode and other features.

History

Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

software company A software company is a company whose primary products are various forms of software, software technology, distribution, and software product development. They make up the software industry. Types There are a number of different types of softw ...

ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in

WinZip WinZip is a trialware file archiver and data compression, compressor for Microsoft Windows, macOS, iOS and Android (operating system), Android. It is developed by WinZip Computing (formerly Nico Mak Computing), which is owned by Corel, Corel Co ...

. The Korean interface was immediately well received and later that year, ALZip was publicly released as

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

. In just over a year, ALZip became the most popular zip program in Korea and by December 2001, was the top downloaded softwareMaeilkyungjae IT Internet (2001-12-03) in the country. By 2004, it had reached a 70%

market share Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those units would have a ...

in South Korea. The popularity of the software and the

ALZ The Alz () is a river in Bavaria, southern Germany, the only discharge of the Chiemsee. Its origin is on the northern shore near Seeon-Seebruck, Seebruck. It is a right tributary of the Inn (river), Inn, into which it flows in Marktl. Other towns ...

archive format played a large role in earning ESTsoft a place in the Digital Innovation Awards Top 100 Companies in South Korea 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 Zip, Zips or ZIP may refer to: Common uses * ZIP Code, USPS postal code * Zipper or zip, clothing fastener Science and technology Computing * ZIP (file format), a compressed archive file format ** zip, a command-line program from Info-ZIP * Zi ...

file format. ALZ compression has no theoretical upper limit for

file size File size is a measure of how much data a computer file contains or, alternately, how much storage it consumes. Typically, file size is expressed in units of measurement based on the byte. By convention, file size units use either a metric prefix ...

s, as they are only limited by

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

limits or the amount of available

storage Storage may refer to: Goods Containers * Dry cask storage, for storing high-level radioactive waste * Food storage * Intermodal container, cargo shipping * Storage tank Facilities * Garage (residential), a storage space normally used to store car ...

. The file format has become common in Korea. The first English version was released in 2002. Since then, support for over 20 languages has been added. The version 11.07 is available through Microsoft Store.

Licensing changes

Originally ALZip was released as pure

, however in October 2001 changed to free for home use, with government usage requiring a

software license A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source ...

. In April 2002, business license was also introduced, commercial usage. Licensing was based on the

honor system An honor system or honesty system is a philosophical way of running a variety of endeavors based on trust, honor, and honesty. Something that operates under the rule of the "honor system" is usually something that does not have strictly enfo ...

, and there were no

nag screen Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

s. With the version 7 release, the license was changed from freeware to

adware Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the ...

, displaying downloaded banner ads, and finally beginning 1 December 2008, all new releases are

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

requiring a paid license except in its original Korean language, which requires no licensing fee. With version 8.51, from 22 August 2012, ALZip changed the license so that it can be licensed free of charge. On the download page of ALZip is a serial number to copy and paste when you start AlZip, in order to have the license of the software free of charge.

Naming and mascots

The name "ALZip" was chosen, as the "AL" part is a transliteration from the Korean "aljip" (

Hangul The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The let ...

: 알집), literally ''EggZip''. Other ALTools feature similar egghead cartoon characters as mascots for each program. Additionally, ALZip integrates into the "New Folder" function of

Windows Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file ...

, where new folders are created with the option of using custom icons and names.

Issues on file format

In 2003, there was a controversy over ALZip's own compression file format ALZ, when a developer of another Korean compression utility, "빵집" insisted that ALZip users were forced to use the ALZip archiver when decompressing ALZ files. He also insisted that ESTsoft does not offer decompression

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

, and third-party archiver developers have used

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

to develop their own algorithms. The current version of "빵집" supports ALZ format.ť§Áý
/ref> and, in ALZip 8.0 beta version, ESTsoft made some format. *.EGG

References

External links