gzip

gzip (GNU zip) is a popular data compression program written by Jean-loup Gailly for the GNU project. Mark Adler wrote the decompression part.

    We developed this program as a replacement for compress because of
    the Unisys and IBM patents covering the LZW algorithm used by
    compress.  These patents made it impossible for us to use compress,
    and we needed a replacement.  The superior compression ratio of gzip
    is just a bonus.