Despite his professional success, Phil's personal life was troubled. He struggled with severe alcoholism and often lived in hotels despite his wealth. He passed away in 2000 at the age of 37.
In the late 1980s, the world of digital storage was a Wild West. Users on Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) needed a way to compress files to save precious bandwidth and disk space. The reigning king was , a format owned by System Enhancement Associates (SEA). Boobzip
The "Zip" format he created, however, became the global standard. Every time you right-click a folder to "Compress" it, you are using the descendant of the tool Phil Katz built in a fit of competitive defiance. Despite his professional success, Phil's personal life was