To add to the recollections, this was also the time that "look and feel" lawsuits were going around -- Lotus suing Paperback Software, Apple suing Microsoft, etc. Most of the BBS community was against look-and-feel and patent lawsuits ("The right to code"), and there was a court injunction preventing the parties from discussing the sea/pk lawsuit. But the pk side leaked, so that was the only side that was heard (and I remember believing at the time that sea was the "bad guys", until I learned a bit more of the nuances of the case, and now think that both sides were both right and wrong).

So that was a major driver for the "arc to zip" conversion, just like the "burn all GIFs" day.