It's possible that the original innovator who made an inception of the open-source software (OSS) has some plan to use it as a proprietary software. This contradiction is not as tough as it appears to be. A very simple solution exists: dual-license or multi-license approach. The idea is to combine proprietary and OSS license options for selection by user discretion. The software is then published with two or more licenses with a notice that those are alternatives. Obviously, their content must be consistent with the existence of multiple licenses. This should not be confused with a case where multiple sub-components of a complex software system have different but yet compatible licenses.

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Practically, the dual-licensing approach means that any potential user or developer willing to create a fork can simply select the license to comply with. The OSS license selection will cause the software for further evolution as a regular OSS. It is very important to clarify that in case the fork belongs to a new owner who selected the OSS license option, it obviously means that the original proprietary license option is not available anymore. Hence, the new holder of the software fork cannot sell this software in a "closed-source" proprietary way.

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The proprietary license selection by companies means that the software license can be commercially distributed and the software product will be used as a proprietary and "closed-source" intellectual property.