History
The name "zip" (meaning "speed"

was suggested by Katz's friend, Robert Mahoney. They wanted to imply that their product would be faster than ARC and other compression formats of the time.
The earliest known version of .ZIP File Format Specification was first published as part of PKZIP 0.9 package under the file APPNOTE.TXT.
Katz publicly released technical documentation on the ZIP file format making it an open format. The specification can also be found in the PKWARE site.