This package provides the original programs that are the de facto standard, in much of the UNIX community, for compressing and uncompressing files. The programs implement a fast, simple LZW file compression algorithm. The LZW algorithm does not have as high a rate of compression as some other algorithms, but LZW implementations such as this one often compress files faster than other, similar programs such as gzip.
For Debian, the standard uncompress program is installed as uncompress.real.
This package contains a copyright notice from one of the original authors in the file /usr/doc/ncompress/README.Debian.