So, what do you mean by, "proprietary" ?

To me, it just means something that is specific to a particular vendor - like we say that Keil's extensions to the 'C' language are "proprietary".

So, that's just a matter of being "vendor-specific" as opposed to "standard"

It doesn't necessarily mean that it's secret or protected or suchlike - just tht it's not the way that others do it.

I think it's not uncommon for "proprietary" schemes to become de-facto standards...?

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.as...-producers