I wouldn't call it a clone, anymore than I would call, say, Linux, a "clone" of Windows for needing to have a similar feature-set to appease newcomers. Much like linux vs windows, octave and matlab started life as completely different things, but octave being the 'underdog' and having a similar enough syntax necessarily tried to match matlab's syntax, to the extent that they pride on compatibility (and treat non-compatibility as 'bugs'), but extend the matlab language to include other features.
Now that both projects are mature, I think it's safe to say that matlab has 'borrowed' a lot of octave's nicer features over the years too (though obviously it's not something that can be publically admitted), like implicit broadcasting, command-line functions etc.
Obviously, neither matlab nor octave are strict subsets of each other. Also, I get the impression that matlab has started taking octave's compatibility very seriously in recent years, and has taken non-trivial steps to break it (annoying, but totally fair, in my view), which octave has resisted for the sake of backwards compatibility. Ironically this often makes octave a more reliable base for runnin older matlab scripts, than matlab itself. (e.g. in the same way that Wine is more reliable for running Win98 applications than Windows 10)
> I wouldn't call it a clone, anymore than I would call, say, Linux, a "clone" of Windows for needing to have a similar feature-set to appease newcomers. Much like linux vs windows, octave and matlab started life as completely different things, but octave being the 'underdog' and having a similar enough syntax necessarily tried to match matlab's syntax, to the extent that they pride on compatibility (and treat non-compatibility as 'bugs')
Nobody calls Linux a "clone" of Windows or vice versa, because even when they implement the same features, in the vast majority of cases the command syntax, APIs, etc, are radically different. There are a few commonalities, but when they exist, they are almost always because both have decided to implement some pre-existing standard. Even when Windows borrows features from Linux/Unix, it normally changes the API in incompatible ways – Windows 10 added pty support copied from Unix and Linux, but came up with an incompatible API to do it (CreatePseudoConsole)
It is the fact that Octave quite intentionally copied a lot of Matlab's syntax which leads it to being called a "clone". If they hadn't done that, nobody would apply that term.
> I think it's safe to say that matlab has 'borrowed' a lot of octave's nicer features over the years too (though obviously it's not something that can be publically admitted), like implicit broadcasting, command-line functions etc.
When Matlab "borrows" features from Octave, does it intentionally choose the same syntax, or does it implement the feature in an incompatible way? The former would constitute cloning, the later would not.
Now that both projects are mature, I think it's safe to say that matlab has 'borrowed' a lot of octave's nicer features over the years too (though obviously it's not something that can be publically admitted), like implicit broadcasting, command-line functions etc.
Obviously, neither matlab nor octave are strict subsets of each other. Also, I get the impression that matlab has started taking octave's compatibility very seriously in recent years, and has taken non-trivial steps to break it (annoying, but totally fair, in my view), which octave has resisted for the sake of backwards compatibility. Ironically this often makes octave a more reliable base for runnin older matlab scripts, than matlab itself. (e.g. in the same way that Wine is more reliable for running Win98 applications than Windows 10)