User:SteveSims/Storage/Patentleft

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 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.