Proprietary

The adjective proprietary means located in the property. It is used in terms of software and hardware to delineate this free software and free hardware.

The noun Proprietary means owner ( the Proprietary = owner). It is used in the law in this meaning.

Both words are derived from the Latin noun Proprietas, property, property, or character means.

Various meanings

Different definitions according to GPL 2.2 and 3

The difference between the definitions 2.2 and 3, above all, on the one hand, the concept of freedom in the sense of free software and on the other hand, the concept of accepted standards for the purposes of official standardization bodies. For example, the audio data compression format MP3 to 2.2 a proprietary format, as it is impacted by actively asserted software patents and thus no longer freely implementable. However, after 3, it is not proprietary, as it is an ISO - standard. The patent-free Ogg Vorbis counterpart, however, is indeed a free format in 2.2, but has been adopted by any major standards organization, and is therefore proprietary by 3.

Often in-house developments are also undocumented or patent loaded and thus proprietary to both definitions, the WMA format.