Re: Proprietary (was: Economics and the GPL)

[email protected] wrote:
> Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 21:45:42 -0600
> From: Tony Lambregts <[email protected]>
> To: "Sean C. Farley" <[email protected]>
> CC: Francois Gouget <[email protected]>, "Deven T. Corzine"
>  <[email protected]>,
>    Wine License <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: Economics and the GPL
> 
> Sean C. Farley wrote:
> 
> >On Sat, 15 Jun 2002 02:30, Francois Gouget wrote:
> >>On Mon, 10 Jun 2002, Deven T. Corzine wrote:
> >>
> >>>To be exacting about this, the GPL is just as "proprietary" as Microsoft's
> >>>EULA is.  The proprietor (such as it were) of GPL code is the community of
> >>>developers willing to operate under the restrictions of the GPL, rather
> >>>than a single legal entity.  In fact, it is the coercion within the GPL
> >>>which makes it proprietary -- the BSD and X11 licenses are not proprietary.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>There you go again completely distorting the meaning of words just to
> >>fit your claims.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >I may or may not agree with the coercion word, but his use of
> >proprietary appears correct to me.  In fact, I have thought this way
> >about the GPL being a community-based proprietor for more than a year.
> >
> >
> >
> The following are links to definintions for proprietary
> 
> http://e-comm.webopedia.com/TERM/p/proprietary.html
> 
> http://searchsystemsmanagement.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid20_gci214576,00.html
> 
> http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=proprietary
> 
> No one can have exclusive rights to GPL software. This use of the word
> proprietory for something that anyone can buy, sell, or give away just
> drives me crazy. *_Anyone_*  is not group it is all groups (even
> Microsoft can sell GPL software) , and therefore proprietory cannot
> apply.  I can't believe this has to be pointed out.
> 
> Words have definitions for a reason and you can't just arbitrarily
> change that definition. so please just knock it off
> 
> Tony Lambregts


While I agreed with you on coercion, I partially disagree with you WRT
proprietary.  In information technology, proprietary has a meaning that
seems somewhat different from the general definition, as witness your
use of the techtarget.com link.  In information technology, proprietary
tends to mean a technology which is developed in secret and is sold for
financial gain.

If you look at definition 1.2 of proprietary and definition 2 of
proprietor from m-w.com, it could be argued that any software product
not in the public domain is proprietary, and the group in control are
the copyright holders.  It is harder to argue that GPL software is
proprietary and BSD software is not proprietary, since in both cases the
group of copyright holders only allows licensing under certain terms
which those wishing to license the software must agree to.  Trying to
argue that the GPL software is more proprietary than BSD software since
it has more restrictions is from my perspective an incorrect use of the
word proprietary, but is separate from the argument about whether or not
they are proprietary in the first place.

GREG