User:SteveSims/Storage/Patentleft

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It is also possible for a copyleft open source company to embrace, extend, and extinguish a proprietary competitor. First, the open source company would embrace a de facto proprietary standard by reverse engineering or otherwise making a compatible open source version of the proprietary product. Upon achieving substantial market share, the open source company would improve their implementation beyond the capabilities of the proprietary de facto standard; these extensions would be copyleft, thereby preventing adoption by proprietary developers. With enough economic resources, the open source company could also patent[1] various components of its program. However, the open source company would license the patents, royalty-free, as long as the licensee's product contains only patents under the same terms, much like copyleft. Eventually, the now-superior and cheaper open source platform would extinguish the proprietary platform, which, unless it becomes open source, would be unable to compete with it due to patent and copyright laws.[2]