[tonysuper]

This might be proprietary, but Apple's other major codec is open.[1] Hopefully this will be as well.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless

[gillianseed]

It was proprietary was most of it's existence and was not opened until 2011, which in turn was likely as a result of everyone using FLAC instead.

I have no doubt this new codec will be proprietary, and only if it fails to gain any traction is there a chance of it becoming open.