defined in this context it's an interesting, but ultimately unwinnable
argument. ;^)
The most appropriate definition of "proprietary" seems to be "privately
owned and run" - which seems to apply clearly to Java. In other words Java
is proprietary because Sun is the proprietor. Not of the language - Sun,
IBM, Microsoft, etc all have Java implementations - but rather of the
definition of the language.
"Standard" is much more difficult to pin down: it's a complex word. Cases
can be made that any programming language is a "standard" in that every
programming language has certain base levels of quality and functionality
(or "standards"). However "ECMA Standard" is simple - they define it for
us:
"A Standard or a Technical Report is a formal document prepared by an Ecma
Technical Committee and approved by the Ecma General Assembly. A majority of
at least two-thirds of all the ordinary members is required for approval."
In that sense there's no doubt that C# is an ECMA standard. However it
still can be proprietary insofar as proprietary is also an implication of
ownership. In this case I think the label "proprietary" would definitely
fit any language with only one vendor even if that language could, in
theory, be implemented by other vendors.
I don't know of any C# vendor other than MS so I (and I'm sure many others)
consider it a proprietary technology despite its status as an ECMA standard.
Just within the definition of the words you can definitely be both
"proprietary" and "standard" - in fact many things to which the term "de
facto standard" applies will generally be both.
This also leads to a discussion of "Open" as applying to standards. Neither
Java or C# are "Open Standards" as commonly defined simply because one body
may make changes to them. I personally don't think that anything can be a
truly "open standard" - just more or less open. PHP is very open, Java is
fairly open, C# is less open but still more open that CFML and so forth.
In short I think that the terms themselves aren't clear and are used in
cases like this more didactically than anything else.
Jim Davis
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