Proprietary
Encyclopedia : P : PR : PRO : Proprietary
Proprietary indicates that a party, or proprietor, exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties.
Where a party, holds or claims proprietary interests in relation to certain types of property (eg. a creative literary work, or software), that property may also be the subject of intellectual property law (eg. copyright or patents).
Historical terms
- a proprietary colonel owed his regimental command not to promotion through the ranks, but to a venal mode of appointment by the crown. The colonelcy of a regiment formerly implied a proprietary right in it. Whether the colonel commanded it directly in the field or not, he always superintended its finance and interior economy, and the emoluments of the office, in the 18th century, were often the only form of pay drawn by general officers. The general officers of the 17th and 18th centuries were invariably colonels of regiments, and in this case the active regimental command was exercised by the lieutenant colonels.
- In the colonial era, a (notably British) monarch could, as a form of indirect rule, grant proprietary rights to individuals over a proprietary colony, in which the proprietors (sometimes styled Lords Proprietors) were given exclusive control, not just ownership under private law, or to a chartered company.
- Proprietor was also the secondary title of the self-styled Leaders of the semi-independent proprietary settlement Swains Island (Jennings family, US, 1856-1926) now part of American Samoa
- a proprietary member is someone whose membership of some institution is a right derived from a specific property, especially real estate. E.g., the Swansea Harbour docks and over 20 miles of adjacent railways were owned and administered by a harbour trust of 26 members: the owner of the Briton Ferry estate (Earl Jersey), 4 representing the lord of the seigniory of Gower (the duke of Beaufort), 12 proprietary members and 9 elected annually by the corporation of Swansea.
Proprietary software
Software which is privately owned or controlled is known as proprietary software. However, the extent to which proprietary rights can be claimed or maintained in relation to software is a matter of considerable controversy (see software patent debate).
Proprietary software is not free software or open source software as end-users generally do not have the ability to:
- Run the software for any purpose
- Study and modify the software
- Copy the software and provide it to third parties
- Make and release improvements to the software
Etymology
The word proprietary comes from the French propriétaire, from the Latin proprietarius. Compare with the Latin proprietas (property), and proprius (ownership).See also
Sources and references
- passim
- [WorldStatesmen- hereUSA]
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