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s proprietary software 52 languages العربية مصرى azərbaycanca भोजपुरी bosanski català کوردی čeština dansk deutsch esperanto español euskara فارسی suomi français galego हिन्दी magyar bahasa indonesia ido íslenska italiano 日本語 qaraqalpaqsha 한국어 lietuvių latviešu олык марий മലയാളം bahasa melayu nederlands norsk bokmål polski português runa simi română русский سنڌي සිංහල simple english slovenčina српски srpski svenska தமிழ் ไทย türkçe українська اردو oʻzbekcha ўзбекча tiếng việt 中文 edit links article talk english read edit view history tools tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikimedia commons wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia redirected from closed source software released under a license restricting rights intellectual property authors rights copyleft copyright database right farmers rights geographical indication indigenous intellectual property industrial design right integrated circuit layout design protection intellectual property infringement literary property moral rights patent peasants rights plant breeders rights plant genetic resources proprietary software related rights sound recording copyright supplementary protection certificate trade dress trade secret trademark utility model patent infringement related topics abandonware artificial intelligence and copyright brand protection copyright abolition copyright troll criticism of copyright bioprospecting biopiracy idea expression distinction limitations and exceptions to copyright fair dealing fair use paraphrasing right to quote orphan work patent troll pirate party public domain outline of intellectual property outline of patents higher categories property and property law v t e proprietary software is software that grants its creator publisher or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modifying it and in some cases as is the case with some patent encumbered and eula bound software from making use of the software on their own thereby restricting their freedoms 1 proprietary software sometimes also referred to as proprietary and internal source software piss an informal and derogatory antiversion of the foss acronym for free and open source software is a subset of non free software a term defined in contrast to free and open source software non commercial licenses such as cc by nc are not deemed proprietary but are non free proprietary software may either be closed source software or source available software 1 2 some open source software can be described as proprietary as copyright is retained by its authors and may be concentrated through contributor license agreement enabling relicensing under more restrictive terms 3 4 5 origin edit until the late 1960s computers especially large and expensive mainframe computers machines in specially air conditioned computer rooms were usually leased to customers rather than sold 6 7 service and all software available were usually supplied by manufacturers without separate charge until 1969 computer vendors usually provided the source code for installed software to customers citation needed customers who developed software often made it available to the public without charge 8 closed source means computer programs whose source code is not published except to licensees it is available to be modified only by the organization that developed it and those licensed to use the software in 1969 ibm which had antitrust lawsuits pending against it led an industry change by starting to charge separately for mainframe software 9 10 and services by unbundling hardware and software 11 bill gates open letter to hobbyists in 1976 decried computer hobbyists rampant copyright infringement of software particularly microsoft s altair basic interpreter and asserted that their unauthorized use hindered his ability to produce quality software but the legal status of software copyright especially for object code was not clear until the 1983 appeals court ruling in apple computer inc v franklin computer corp 12 13 14 according to brewster kahle the legal characteristic of software changed also due to the u s copyright act of 1976 15 the commission on new technological uses of copyrighted works concluded in 1978 with the recommendations that became the computer software copyright act of 1980 16 starting in february 1983 ibm adopted an object code only model for a growing list of their software and stopped shipping much of the source code 17 18 even to licensees in 1983 binary software became copyrightable in the united states as well by the apple vs franklin law decision 19 before which only source code was copyrightable 20 additionally the growing availability of millions of computers based on the same microprocessor architecture created for the first time an unfragmented and big enough market for binary distributed software 20 examples of proprietary operating systems include microsoft windows classic mac os macos ios and ipados 21 types edit free open licenses non free licenses public domain equivalents permissive license copyleft protective license noncommercial license proprietary license trade secret software pd unlicense bsd mit apache gpl agpl jrl afpl proprietary software no public license private internal software other creative works pd cc0 cc by cc by sa cc by nc copyright no public license unpublished licenses edit this section is an excerpt from software license proprietary software licenses edit a brief written out beta test software license issued by macromedia in 1995 the tendency to license proprietary software rather than sell it dates from the time period before the existence then the scope of software copyright protection was clear these licenses have continued in use after software copyright was recognized in the courts and are considered to grant the company extra protection compared to copyright law 22 according to united states federal law a company can restrict the parties to which it sells but it cannot prevent a buyer from reselling the product software licensing agreements usually prohibit resale enabling the company to maximize revenue 23 traditionally software was distributed in the form of binary object code that could not be understood or modified by the user 24 but could be downloaded and run the user bought a perpetual license to use a particular version of the software 25 software as service saas vendors who have the majority market share in application software as of 2023 update 26 rarely offer perpetual licenses 27 saas licenses are usually temporary and charged on a pay per usage or subscription basis 28 although other revenue models such as freemium are also used 29 for customers the advantages of temporary licenses include reduced upfront cost increased flexibility and lower overall cost compared to a perpetual license 25 in some cases the steep one time cost demanded by sellers of traditional software were out of the reach of smaller businesses but pay per use saas models makes the software affordable 30 mixed source software edit software distributions considered as proprietary may in fact incorporate a mixed source model including both free and non free software in the same distribution 31 most if not all so called proprietary unix distributions are mixed source software bundling open source components like bind sendmail x window system dhcp and others along with a purely proprietary kernel and system utilities 32 33 multi licensing edit main article multi licensing some free software packages are also simultaneously available under proprietary terms examples include mysql sendmail and ssh the original copyright holders for a work of free software even copyleft free software can use dual licensing to allow themselves or others to redistribute proprietary versions non copyleft free software i e software distributed under a permissive free software license or released to the public domain allows anyone to make proprietary redistributions 34 35 free software that depends on proprietary software is considered trapped by the free software foundation this includes software written only for microsoft windows 36 or software that could only run on java before it became free software 37 legal basis edit further information software law software copyright software patent and end user license agreement most of the software is covered by copyright which along with contract law patents and trade secrets provides legal basis for its owner to establish exclusive rights 38 a software vendor delineates the specific terms of use in an end user license agreement eula the user may agree to this contract in writing interactively on screen clickwrap or by opening the box containing the software shrink wrap licensing license agreements are usually not negotiable 39 software patents grant exclusive rights to algorithms software features or other patentable subject matter with coverage varying by jurisdiction vendors sometimes grant patent rights to the user in the license agreement 40 the source code for a piece of proprietary software is routinely handled as a trade secret 41 software can be made available with fewer restrictions on licensing or source code access software that satisfies certain conditions of freedom and openness is known as free or open source 42 limitations edit since license agreements do not override applicable copyright law or contract law provisions in conflict with applicable law are not enforceable 43 some software is specifically licensed and not sold in order to avoid limitations of copyright such as the first sale doctrine 44 exclusive rights edit the owner of proprietary software exercises certain exclusive rights over the software the owner can restrict the use inspection of source code modification of source code and redistribution use of the software edit further information copy protection crippleware and price discrimination vendors typically limit the number of computers on which software can be used and prohibit the user from installing the software on extra computers citation needed restricted use is sometimes enforced through a technical measure such as product activation a product key or serial number a hardware key or copy protection vendors may also distribute versions that remove particular features or versions which allow only certain fields of endeavor such as non commercial educational or non profit use use restrictions vary by license windows vista starter is restricted to running a maximum of three concurrent applications the retail edition of microsoft office home and student 2007 is limited to non commercial use on up to three devices in one household windows xp can be installed on one computer and limits the number of network file sharing connections to 10 45 the home edition disables features present in windows xp professional traditionally adobe licenses are limited to one user but allow the user to install a second copy on a home computer or laptop 46 this is no longer true with the switching to creative cloud iwork 09 apple s productivity suite is available in a five user family pack for use on up to five computers in a household 47 inspection and modification of source code edit see also open source software and crippleware vendors typically distribute proprietary software in compiled form usually the machine language understood by the computer s central processing unit they typically retain the source code or human readable version of the software often written in a higher level programming language 48 this scheme is often referred to as closed source 49 while most proprietary software is distributed without the source code some vendors distribute the source code or otherwise make it available to customers for example users who have purchased a license for the internet forum software vbulletin can modify the source for their own site but cannot redistribute it this is true for many web applications which must be in source code form when being run by a web server the source code is covered by a non disclosure agreement or a license that allows for example study and modification but not redistribution 50 the text based email client pine and certain implementations of secure shell are distributed with proprietary licenses that make the source code available citation needed some licenses for proprietary software allow distributing changes to the source code but only to others licensed for the product and some 51 of those modifications are eventually picked up by the vendor some governments fear that proprietary software may include defects or malicious features which would compromise sensitive information in 2003 microsoft established a government security program gsp to allow governments to view source code and microsoft security documentation of which the chinese government was an early participant 52 53 the program is part of microsoft s broader shared source initiative which provides source code access for some products the reference source license ms rsl and limited public license ms lpl are proprietary software licenses where the source code is made available governments have also been accused of adding such malware to software themselves according to documents released by edward snowden the nsa has used covert partnerships with software companies to make commercial encryption software exploitable to eavesdropping or to insert backdoors 54 55 software vendors sometimes use obfuscated code to impede users who would reverse engineer the software 56 this is particularly common with certain programming languages citation needed for example the bytecode for programs written in java can be easily decompiled to somewhat usable code citation needed and the source code for programs written in scripting languages such as php or javascript is available at run time 57 redistribution edit further information shareware see also freely redistributable software proprietary software vendors can prohibit the users from sharing the software with others another unique license is required for another party to use the software in the case of proprietary software with source code available the vendor may also prohibit customers from distributing their modifications to the source code shareware is closed source software whose owner encourages redistribution at no cost but which the user sometimes must pay to use after a trial period the fee usually allows use by a single user or computer in some cases software features are restricted during or after the trial period a practice sometimes called crippleware interoperability with software and hardware edit further information interoperabi...
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