7-Zip

7-Zip is a Free software/open source file archiver designed originally for Microsoft Windows, and later made available to other computer operating systems. In the form of p7zip, the command-line version of 7-Zip has been ported to Unix-like systems such as GNU/Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X as well as AmigaOS. It is also compatible with DOS via either a DOS port, or by using the HX-DOS extender to run the Windows command-line version. 7-Zip operates primarily with the 7z archive format, as well as being able to read several other archive formats. In operation a user can use the command line (all systems), graphical user interface (Windows only) or seamless Windows shell environment methods of control. 7-Zip began in 2000 and is actively developed by Igor Pavlov. In contrast to the market-leading programs WinZip and WinRAR, which remain as proprietary competitors, 7-Zip is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) (with the RAR license restrictions), and as such is free software (providing it is not distributed with the non-free RAR code). 7-Zip was the winner of the SourceForge.net 2007 community choice awards for "Technical Design" and for "Best Project".