Files in these directories have been compressed with the internet-standard `gzip' program, which is free of known software patents and also compresses better than `compress'. Files compressed with this method end with `.gz'. Gzip can also uncompress files compressed with `compress' (i.e. files ending in `.Z'), since the uncompression algorithm is not patented. To extract sources that are in files ending in `.tar.gz' you can use the command gzip -d < foo.tar.gz | tar xf - where `foo.tar.gz' is the name of the file. Gzip is available in source form on this ftp archive in /pub/src/gnu/, in the file gzip-N.N.shar, gzip-N.N.tar, and gzip-N.N.tar.gz (the last for people who already have gzip but want to get a newer version, since the gzipped file will transfer faster). To find a VMS executable, read gzip-vms.README there on a GNU archive site. For those of you so misfortunate as not to have an operating system, gzip is also available as a MS-DOS executable in the file gzip-N.N.msdos.exe.