[geeks] SPARC proprietary

[Kevin]

It's not really the point of the article, but the
article linked below contains this quote:

"Can Sun really become more oriented around software
and managed services rather than selling servers and
continuing to spend R&D on its own proprietary
processor technology?"

I thought the SPARC architecture was not proprietary? 
Am i missing something?

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2914700,00.html?tag=zdnnfd.comment

/KRM