proprietary

Examples of proprietary in the following topics:

• English Administration of the Colonies

  • Britain's 13 North American colonies reflected different structures of government: provincial, proprietary, and charter.
  • By 1776, Britain had evolved three different forms of government for its North American colonies: provincial, proprietary, and charter.
  • Proprietary colonies included Pennsylvania (which included Delaware at the time), New Jersey, and Maryland.
  • Proprietary colonies were owned by a person (always a white male) or family, who could make laws and appoint officials as he or they pleased.
  • Proprietary colonies were governed much as provincial colonies except that Lords Proprietors, rather than the king, appointed the governor.

• The "Do Anything" Licenses

  • If you're comfortable with your project's code potentially being used in proprietary programs, then use an MIT/X-style license.

• The GPL and License Compatibility

  • By far the sharpest dividing line in licensing is that between proprietary-incompatible and proprietary-compatible licenses, that is, between the GNU General Public License and everything else.
  • Because the primary goal of the GPL's authors is the promotion of free software, they deliberately crafted the license to make it impossible to mix GPLed code into proprietary programs.
  • Most of the GPL-compatible open source licenses are also proprietary-compatible: that is, code under such a license can be used in a GPLed program, and it can be used in a proprietary program.

• Dual Licensing Schemes

  • Some projects try to fund themselves by using a dual licensing scheme, in which proprietary derivative works may pay the copyright holder for the right to use the code, but the code still remains free for use by open source projects.
  • Usually the license for the free side is the GNU GPL, since it already bars others from incorporating the covered code into their proprietary product without permission from the copyright holder.
  • You might be wondering: how can the copyright holder offer proprietary licensing for a mandatory fee if the terms of the GNU GPL stipulate that the code must be available under less restrictive terms?
  • Each time it takes one out of the bucket to send into the world, it can decide what license to put on it: GPL, proprietary, or something else.
  • The problem is that any volunteer who makes a code contribution is now contributing to two distinct entities: the free version of the code and the proprietary version.

• Aspects of Licenses

  • Some free licenses allow the covered code to be used in proprietary programs.
  • This does not affect the licensing terms of the proprietary program: it is still as proprietary as ever, it just happens to contain some code from a non-proprietary source.
  • The Apache License, X Consortium License, BSD-style license, and the MIT-style license are all examples of proprietary-compatible licenses.
  • These licenses are often still proprietary-compatible: they do not necessarily demand that the derivative work be free, merely that credit be given to the free code.

• Types of Corporate Involvement

  • Separate organizations with related software needs often find themselves duplicating effort, either by redundantly writing similar code in-house, or by purchasing similar products from proprietary vendors.
  • Dual-licensing is the practice of offering software under a traditional proprietary license for customers who want to resell it as part of a proprietary application of their own, and simultaneously under a free license for those willing to use it under open source terms (see the section called "Dual Licensing Schemes" in Licenses, Copyrights, and Patents).
  • The presence of revenue from a proprietary version does not necessarily mean that the free software version is worse off, and some very well-known and widely-used free software has had corresponding proprietary versions (MySQL is probably the most famous example).
  • However, some developers dislike the thought that their contributions may end up in the proprietary version.
  • Also, the mere presence of the proprietary version suggests the possibility that some of the best salaried developers' attention is going to the proprietary code, not the open source code, and this can undermine other developers' faith in the open source project.

• Canned Hosting Sites

  • I include both proprietary sites, i.e., sites for which the source code behind the service is proprietary, and open source ones, i.e., those for which full source code is available under a free license.

• Terminology

  • Generally "proprietary" and "closed-source" are synonyms.
  • Since the source code cannot be seen with most proprietary software, this is normally a distinction without a difference.
  • However, occasionally someone releases proprietary software under a license that allows others to view the source code.
  • Thus, the difference between proprietary and closed-source is mostly irrelevant, and the two can be treated as synonyms.
  • Sometimes commercial is used as a synonym for "proprietary," but properly speaking, the two are not the same thing.

• The GPL

  • If you don't want your code to be used in proprietary programs, use the GNU General Public License, version 3 (gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).

• A Study of Process

  • In the VHS tape market, 3M had no proprietary manufacturing advantage, as there were many Asian competitors that could produce high-quality, VHS tape at lower cost.
  • Since 3M had no proprietary control over the transformation process for VHS tape that would allow the company to protect its profit margins for this product, it dropped VHS tape from its offerings.
  • In the VHS tape market 3M had no proprietary manufacturing advantage, as there were many Asian competitors that could produce high-quality VHS tape at lower cost.
  • Since 3M had no proprietary control over the transformation process for VHS tape that would allow the company to protect its profit margins for this product, it dropped VHS tape from its offerings.