LZHAM + Crunch Now Placed Under The Public Domain

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LZHAM + Crunch Now Placed Under The Public Domain

Compression expert Rich Geldreich who previously worked for the likes of Valve and Unity prior to co-founding his own consulting firm has now made the Crunch and LZHAM technologies available under the public domain...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...-Public-Domain

[hotaru]

it's a bit odd that the readme in the LZHAM repo compares it to LZMA and LZ4 while completely ignoring ZStandard.

[timofonic]

it's a bit odd that the readme in the LZHAM repo compares it to LZMA and LZ4 while completely ignoring ZStandard.

I agree!

Are there any comparisons out there?

[Ropid]

it's a bit odd that the readme in the LZHAM repo compares it to LZMA and LZ4 while completely ignoring ZStandard.

The README was written in January and February 2015 if you browse its commit log, the newest edit is just for the license.

[bpetty]

That is the great thing about open source... other players come in and push your work to the side. At that point you have to fight to stay relevant. If you can't constantly update your code-base to give it an edge, you either open up your licensing model and patents or fade into obscurity.

[FireBurn]

Was this released by the same guy who complained the last time he released his code?

[linuxgeex]

I agree!

Are there any comparisons out there?

https://quixdb.github.io/squash-benc...-decompression

[tildearrow]

I don't know why, but I feel this about source code releases:

- People who don't understand what open-source is release it under public domain.
- People who do know open-source exists release it under an open-source license.

As an example, see abandonware source code releases.

[illwieckz]

The thing is that Unity improved it and broke compatibility in the meantime (for the good anyway):

Unity guys said that their modified crunch tool “can compress up to 2.5 times faster, while providing about 10% better compression ratio”. So We did a test on our own asset repository, re-crunching all the ressources and textures packages. The given corpus at the time we did the the test produced 1797 .crn files. We benchmarked both our old crunch tool based on BinomialLLC code and the new Unity one with our patches applied. We rebuilt the binaries so there is no bias on that part. And here come the results :

BinomialLLC’s crunch:

• compression time: 115 minutes 8 seconds
• produced file size: 269 megabytes

Unity’s crunch:

• compression time: 26 minutes 43 seconds
• produced file size: 239 megabytes

source: https://unvanquished.net/unvanquished-area-51/

Also, Unity is not merging fixes, so maintained version of Crunch is there (we makes sure it compiles under Linux, macOS and Windows):
https://github.com/DaemonEngine/Crunch

Michael Seeing public domain is good, but what is public domain is now obsolete, less performant, less efficient, and dead, incompatible code.

As an example, see abandonware source code releases.

Yes, this old Binomial's crunch is abandonware, look at Dæmon/Unvanquished Crunch for maintained one. Please, people, please don't use that old code from Binomial, it's unmaintained, less efficient than it can be, and a much much much slower than it can be. Also, there may be no way for a Crunch loaded to dectect that old format so your precious files would just produce pure garbage (or fail miserably) on modern editing tools and engines.

Also, Rich Geldreich is now working on another project, Basis: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...WebGL-New-Exts
So, if you still need Crunch, please, really please not use the old code from Binomial repository. To be honest I don't know why he never merged Unity's work on Crunch. The code from Binomial repository is dead and must not be used.

[illwieckz]

Well, my comment was flagged… this code is abandonware, and did not get the last updates, please don't use it: it produces files incompatible with current software: the Unity game engine, the Dæmon game engine, the NetRadiant game level editor, etc. This other tree has performances/efficiency patches from Unity and maintenance and compilation fixes an the three main OS from Unvanquished/Dæmon: https://github.com/DaemonEngine/Crunch