Meaning of “proprietary”

Posted on January 1, 2003 by Ian Betteridge

Can someone explain to me why Jack Schofield thinks that the Mac is a proprietary system while Windows isn’t? Has Windows gone open source while I wasn’t watching? Or, in fact, does Microsoft still own it lock, stock and barrel, keeping the source code to itself?

I refer to Dictionary.com’s definition: “Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent”. I think that covers Windows.

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  • http://www.oblomovka.com danny

    “Proprietary systems”, not OSes. He means that Apple can keep tally, because the number of people who are buying non-Apple hardware and installing MacOS X on it are minimal. Windows is a proprietary OS on a non-proprietary hardware, so it’s much harder to keep tally. It’s harder to get realsitic figures out of all the hardware manufacturers, let alone people like motherboard makers. And, as he says, many people may be running one copy of Windows on more than one machine.

    Well, you did ask.

  • http://www.ludicrous.org.uk Ian Betteridge

    The fact remains that if you want to run Windows, the system you end up running is as proprietary as running a Mac. What’s more, you can’t run more than one copy of Windows XP – unless you hack it – thanks to that silly activation scheme. In fact, Microsoft has a much better idea of how many people are running its current OS than Apple does.

  • http://www.sony-conferencing.com Michael Bond

    So what stops OGG from forming a standards commitee just like MPEG?