Eugene Roshal (March 10, 1972) is a Russian software engineer best known as the developer of:
FAR file manager (1996)
RAR file format (1993)
WinRAR file archiver
The RAR compression algorithm is officially owned by his elder brother Alexander, because Eugene Roshal has "no time to concern himself with software development and copyright-related issues at the same time."
Biography
Eugene Roshal is a software developer who is known primarily for his contributions in file archiving and data compression. How well is Roshal known exactly? Perhaps not quite as well as his star product, though he gets full credit for one of the most popular and longest-running file compression programs, as well as the compression method himsef. Roshal's WinRAR, named for the ".rar" format that he also created some 17 years ago, is one of the best known of its kind and has been opening file archives for the masses since 1995. The remarkable achievement that Roshal has made with WinRAR is not necessarily the standardization and longevity of the program or the format itself, but rather the incremental improvements that he has made to his creation over the course of the past 15 years. Indeed, archiving with Roshal's RAR technology has indeed proved an upgrade over existing formats (it actually features a compression ratio of up to 15% better than zip archiving), but his ongoing development of WinRAR, including encryption options and the ability to repair damaged archives, continues to breathe life into a product whose begninnings harken back to the infancy of the internet. Roshal has also benefited the project by encouraging community development, allowing users to create and submit icon packs and themes, while overseeing its expansion into over 46 languages. Additionally, Roshal contributes to the maintainance of a top project website, complete with full documentation and an exhaustive online help guide. WinRAR owes its popularity, success and stellar reputation as much to its developers ingenium as to his ardent support and continuing refinement of a top program.