We tried to use something other than zlib once. The application needed to make a copy of a CD-ROM and compress the copy. This was back in the day when a couple gigs was a big hard drive, and 200 MHz was a fast CPU. We first tried zlib but it wasn't fast enough for the client. We looked around, and found another library, written by a graduate student, that was a lot faster. It didn't compress as well, but it was good enough for the client, given the speed. The only problem was it was under GPL, and no way was the client going to open source the application.
We contacted the grad student, and worked out a tentative deal to license the library for around $2k and started working out the details. Then he got all paranoid about Microsoft. Most of our products were Windows products--so what if Microsoft bought us? Would they end up with a Microsoft-wide site license for his library? He wanted to put into the contract terms that would terminate the license if our company changed ownership. Those kind of terms are tricky. Would we lose the license if we went public? What if one of the two major owners (who together owned about 99% of the stock) died and the stock went to their kids?
The CEO (who was one of those two owners) didn't have time to deal with that, said screw it, and told me to find something else.
So I went back to zlib, and put a slider in the ripper settings to control speed vs. compression. The implementation was to simply skip compressing some of the blocks when ripping. The slider controlled what percentage of blocks were compressed.
PS: ~12 years later, we're still owned by the same owner. Microsoft has not ever tried to buy us.
"So I went back to zlib, and put a slider in the ripper settings to control speed vs. compression. The implementation was to simply skip compressing some of the blocks when ripping. The slider controlled what percentage of blocks were compressed."
How did that resolve your inability to license zlib?
We contacted the grad student, and worked out a tentative deal to license the library for around $2k and started working out the details. Then he got all paranoid about Microsoft. Most of our products were Windows products--so what if Microsoft bought us? Would they end up with a Microsoft-wide site license for his library? He wanted to put into the contract terms that would terminate the license if our company changed ownership. Those kind of terms are tricky. Would we lose the license if we went public? What if one of the two major owners (who together owned about 99% of the stock) died and the stock went to their kids?
The CEO (who was one of those two owners) didn't have time to deal with that, said screw it, and told me to find something else.
So I went back to zlib, and put a slider in the ripper settings to control speed vs. compression. The implementation was to simply skip compressing some of the blocks when ripping. The slider controlled what percentage of blocks were compressed.
PS: ~12 years later, we're still owned by the same owner. Microsoft has not ever tried to buy us.