Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore

Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore

I’m not using the word “proprietary” in the lawyer’s sense of intellectual property rights (though some of those are involved), but in the ordinary language sense of “differentiated with a view to achieving competitive advantage in the market (and possible some degree of customer lock-in)”

Except that is not the ordinary language sense of "proprietary" at all, which is rather "Of or relating to an owner or ownership".

If it is not your property, it is not proprietary. If it is your property and you let anyone use it as if it weren't, it isn't proprietary either, but something much more closely resembling the public domain, which is about as far from proprietary as you can get.