Zlib is a massively used software library written in C that implements the deflate compression method found in gzip and PKZIP. It is designed to be a free, general-purpose, legally unencumbered lossless data-compression library for use on virtually any computer hardware and operating system.
Zlib is used by numerous software applications and systems including:
This package provides the shared library libz.so which contains the compression and decompression functions. The library follows the standard C calling conventions and provides a simple API for integrating compression capabilities into applications.
The zlib library is distributed under a permissive license that allows its use in both open-source and proprietary software without licensing restrictions.