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[andyr2005]

Hi,

Was just wondering if PowerArchiver team are planning on adding support for the creation of .RAR files in any of the future releases.

Thanks.

[Mameluke]

Unfortunately this is not possible right now.
It’s not because the programming would be hard but because of legal issues.

The makers of the RAR format (ACE is in the same boat) allow free extraction but do not allow anyone to make other programs that can create RAR (and ACE) files.

It’s been requested a lot but it’s not up to the makers of PA. RAR is patented and there is no legal way around that. When or IF the makers of RAR decide to freely allow the creation and extraction I am sure it will be done.

(Please go bug the makers of RAR. I am being serious :) The more we bug them the closer they get to caving in :D )

Mame

[davidsplash]

that is not totally true they do allow people to licese there format for creation purposes. However this would make pa more expensive unless they and winrar do it as a plugin and sold the plugin for money so that pa could do it.

[Mameluke]

This is news to me. Can you please provide a link to any program that is able to do this other than winrar?
I’m not talking about GUI’s made to work with the command line versions liek winzip works with LHA etc.

Thanks

Mame

[davidsplash]

This is not the place to talk about pa’s substandard competitor comprexx

this is a program that has rar compression But it doesn’t do that good a job. But it has it.

[Mameluke]

Thanks I was not aware other programs did that.

Mame

[spwolf]

we are an US company, so US laws apply to us. There are some programs from Europe that have rar compression but there are no software patent laws in Europe.

[davidsplash]

If you require a europe based site i can setone up for you.

If you had it as a plugin and could only download it from a europen server like bt it would get round the us law.

Just a thought.

As i Have done that with some other software in the past

[andyr2005]

@spwolf:

we are an US company, so US laws apply to us. There are some programs from Europe that have rar compression but there are no software patent laws in Europe.

SPWolf,

I am from the UK, and I am DEFINITE, that UK and the rest of Europe DO have Software Patent laws.

[davidsplash]

its true to a certain extent software patents are the same as normal patents. If you have a payent just for the usa then people in the usa can not copy your code. However if you don’t have a europe patent people in europe can copy your code. Best solution if you are going to sell all round the world is to apply for a worldwide paten but this cost loads.

Winrar probably only has a usa patent as it thinks noone would bother copying its rar format.

get what i mean.

[jowood]

@davidsplash:

Winrar probably only has a usa patent as it thinks noone would bother copying its rar format.

There is no Winrar patent, neither in Europe nor in US.

[spwolf]

@jowood:

There is no Winrar patent, neither in Europe nor in US.

correct. I very much doubt that they have patented actual format.

however that is still possible, and changes nothing.