> Look up the actual definition of "proprietary". If a company owns it, it's proprietary...even open source software.
It's not what this word means in this context. Almost nobody uses proprietary this way to describe software, because it's used as opposed to FLOSS, and because it would be useless: a piece of software always belongs to someone unless it reached public domain (which is not many pieces of software). It always has one or several authors, working for someone else or not, so by this definition any software would be proprietary. Why call a piece of software proprietary then if it's always the case?
It's like proprietary protocol meaning "non-standard", "specific". Proprietary has several meanings, depending on the context.
You need to use the words the way they are by everybody to be understood correctly. Or stick to your usage and you'll end up in futile debates again and again. Or try to convince people that your usage is the right one if you have strong reasons to do this. But good luck with that. Proprietary software is used with this meaning since the 80s and it's not controversial AFAIK.
> Open source software can cost money, and still be open source...it currently exists.
It's not what this word means in this context. Almost nobody uses proprietary this way to describe software, because it's used as opposed to FLOSS, and because it would be useless: a piece of software always belongs to someone unless it reached public domain (which is not many pieces of software). It always has one or several authors, working for someone else or not, so by this definition any software would be proprietary. Why call a piece of software proprietary then if it's always the case?
It's like proprietary protocol meaning "non-standard", "specific". Proprietary has several meanings, depending on the context.
You need to use the words the way they are by everybody to be understood correctly. Or stick to your usage and you'll end up in futile debates again and again. Or try to convince people that your usage is the right one if you have strong reasons to do this. But good luck with that. Proprietary software is used with this meaning since the 80s and it's not controversial AFAIK.
> Open source software can cost money, and still be open source...it currently exists.
I know, I work at a FLOSS company.