Difference between revisions of "proprietary software"

from HTYP, the free directory anyone can edit if they can prove to me that they're not a spambot
Jump to navigation Jump to search
(→‎Overview: links - articles - R. Miller)
m (Reverted edits by Dash McWayne (Talk); changed back to last version by Woozle)
 
(One intermediate revision by one other user not shown)
(No difference)

Latest revision as of 20:08, 21 August 2008

Overview

proprietary software is software whose copyright owner does not permit others to distribute further copies. Proprietary software almost never includes source code, as this would allow anyone to remove identifying text or images from the software, or even reverse-engineer and rewrite it from the ground up, recompile the code, and distribute the resulting software as their own. (In the case of reverse-engineering, such redistribution could arguably be legal, as ideas are not supposed to be copyrightable or patentable, although in practice copyrights and patents are often granted for such; see Issuepedia:Intellectual Property.) This generally means that only the copyright owner can provide complete support for the software, as nobody else has access to knowledge of the software's inner workings.

It is essentially the opposite of free, open-source software.

Links

Articles