this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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Fuck AI
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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It’s is not useful. It is fucking great.
Wait till you learn about 7zip…
7zip didn't exist when winrar was released... im pretty sure anyway...
Fact check: TRUE
Winrar released April 1995, and 7zip released January 1999 according to Wikipedia.
Yeah there was a time when winrar was basically the best option for zip files it made it easy...
There was Winzip before.
Yeah, but it was a poster child for nagware.
Then rar came along, and that sweet sweet compression and multi-volume splitting made it the best tool for those sailing a jolly roger on those slow, stormy seas...
I don't really have an issue with nagware. You got a powerful, useful piece of software for free. I'm starting to see a lot of comments in this vein on Lemmy. Open Source is fantastic, but it's also okay to want to get paid for the time and effort put into something.
What you're seeing on Lemmy is up to you.
What I'm talking about is late 90s and early 00s, with WinZip being the prime example but others like ACDSee or even mIRC also coming to mind, where the whole shareware model for the era was companies testing out just how inconvenient they could be and still get the users to buy their apps.
The glorious counterpoint to this was WinAmp, who not only whipped the lama's ass, but was also free (for non-comercial use) shareware and users paid voluntarily, which I gladly would have if I wasn't a broke kid at the time.
This era died off completely after that, as the internet became more accessible, open source and libre licenses exploded, and many apps migrated to web browsers.