7-Zip the free and open source file archiver

I noticed that a lot of people have WinZip and/or WinRAR installed in their computer, and most of them remain unregistered. Both of them are famous file archiver utility applications, and they are shareware, meaning you can try them out for free for a limited period of time. After that, if you are satisfied and want to continue to use them, you have the obligation to pay for the software.

What if you are not willing to pay for your file archiver utilities? Then you should uninstall them from your computer. However, you also have the option of using open source file archiver utility, which you don't need to pay for it and you can freely use it, copy it, redistribute it, even bundle it with your own application. 7-Zip is the one you are looking for.

7-Zip is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). It is a file archiver with high compression ratio and comes with its own 7z compression format which can compress files even better than ZIP and RAR format. It is available in both GUI version and command line version, and its source code is available in Source Forge repository.

Here are the features of 7-Zip:

• Works in Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista.
• Has ported version for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, DOS, etc.
• Localizations for 69 languages.
• High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression.
• Supported archive formats:
  - Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR.
  - Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS.
• For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip.
• Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats.
• Self-extracting capability for 7z format.
• Integration with Windows Shell.
• Powerful File Manager.
• Powerful command line version.
• Plugin for FAR Manager.
  

To download 7-Zip, click here.