Clone (computing)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For copying an object in computer science, see Cloning (programming).
Not to be confused with fork (software development) or remaster.

In computing, a clone is hardware or software that is designed to function in exactly the same way as another system.[1] A specific subset of clones are remakes (or remades), which are revivals of old, obsolete, or discontinued products.

Motivation

Clones and remakes are created for reasons including competition, standardization, availability across platforms, and as homage. Compatibility with the original system is usually the explicit purpose of cloning hardware or low-level software such as operating systems (e.g. AROS and MorphOS are intended to be compatible with AmigaOS). Application software is cloned by providing the same functionality.

Commercially-motivated clones are made often during a competitor product's initial successful commercial run, intentionally competing with the original and trying to participate in their success.

Hardware

SNS-101
. This unit plays both NES and SNES cartridges.

Hardware clones

When

diskettes
which could not be directly interchanged with standard IBM PCs).

While the term has mostly fallen into commercial disuse, the term clone for PCs still applies to a PC made to entry-level or above standard (at the time it was made) which bears no commercial branding (e.g., Acer, Dell, HP, IBM). This includes, but is not limited to, PCs assembled by home users or corporate IT departments. (See also White box (computer hardware).)

There were many

Nintendo Entertainment System hardware clones due to the popularity and longevity of the Nintendo Entertainment System
.

Hardware remakes

Examples for hardware remakes include recent home computer remakes.

A special kind of hardware remakes are

WinUAE emulator software tries to behave exactly like a physical Amiga
.

Software

Software can be cloned by

UNIX, was motivated by a need of the free software movement for an operating system composed of entirely free software
.

In the United States, the case of

Lotus v. Borland allows the functionality of a program to be cloned so long as copyright
in the code and interface is not infringed.

Yet, the public interface may also be subject to copyright to the extent that it contains expression (such as the appearance of an icon). For example, in August 2012,

Facebook game, The Ville, was a direct clone of EA's own Facebook game, The Sims Social. The lawsuit challenges that The Ville not only copies the gameplay mechanics of The Sims Social, but also uses art and visual interface aspects that appear to be inspired by The Sims Social.[2][3][4] The two companies settled out of court on undisclosed terms in February 2013.[5]

Examples of software cloning include the ReactOS project which tries to clone Microsoft Windows, and GNU Octave, which treats incompatibility with MathWorks MATLAB as a bug.[6]

Video games

Main article: Video game clone

Since the start of the video game industry, clones of successful concepts and games have been common. The first influential first-person shooter, Doom, led in the 1990s to the creation of a new genre dubbed as Doom clones. In the 2000s, the open world action-adventure Grand Theft Auto inspired the creation of many Grand Theft Auto clones.

Software remakes

Main article: Video game remake

Remakes of software are revivals of old, obsolete, or discontinued software.

A good share of software remakes are

server emulator
.

Since the 2000s there has been an increasing number of commercial remakes of classical games by the original developer or publisher for current platforms as the

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition.[8][9]

Other uses of the term

Databases

A

replicate and backup
, in that the cloned environment is both fully functional and separate in its own right. Additionally, the cloned environment may be modified at its inception due to configuration changes or data subsetting.

Desktop

See also:
Remote desktop and Desktop virtualization

Since 2010, clone computing, in the sense of replicating a session on a host computer in a virtual instance in the

cloud, has been introduced. This allows the user to have access to a copy of their PC's desktop on any other computing device such as a tablet computer, a personal computer running any operating system, WebOS, smartphones
, etc.

The clone computer replicates, runs, and is always available through a series of cloud servers. Unlike remote management software, clone computing has no dependency on the host computer.

Disk cloning software

Main article: Disk cloning

Disk cloning is the process of copying the contents of one computer hard drive to another disk or to an "image" file. Typically, the contents of the first disk are written to an image file as an intermediate step, and the second disk is loaded with the contents of the image. A cloned drive can replace the original, rather than simply containing backup copies of files.

Cloning software replicates the operating system, drives, software and patches of one computer for a variety of purposes, including setting up multiple computers, hard drive upgrades, and system recovery in the event of disk failure or corruption.[10]

Programming

Main article: Cloning (programming)

In

copy constructor. Cloning is polymorphic
, in that the type of the object being cloned need not be specified, in contrast to using a copy constructor, which requires specifying the type (in the constructor call).

See also

References

  1. ^ clone /n./ "An exact duplicate: "Our product is a clone of their product." Implies a legal reimplementation from documentation or by reverse-engineering" from the Jargon File
  2. ^ Griffen, Daniel Nye (2012-08-06). "EA Sues Zynga, But Deeper Social Issues Threaten". Forbes. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  3. ^ Brown, Nathan (2012-01-25). "How Zynga cloned its way to success". Edge. Archived from the original on Jul 9, 2012. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  4. ^ Jamison, Peter (2010-09-08). "FarmVillains". SF Weekly. Archived from the original on Aug 2, 2012. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  5. Gamasutra
    . Retrieved 2013-02-15.
  6. ^ 11. Porting programs from MATLAB to Octave "There are still a number of differences between Octave and MATLAB, however in general differences between the two are considered as bugs."
  7. Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    . Retrieved 2013-06-28. The worst days [for game development] were the cartridge days for the NES. It was a huge risk – you had all this money tied up in silicon in a warehouse somewhere, and so you'd be conservative in the decisions you felt you could make, very conservative in the IPs you signed, your art direction would not change, and so on. Now it's the opposite extreme: we can put something up on Steam, deliver it to people all around the world, make changes. We can take more interesting risks.[...] Retail doesn't know how to deal with those games. On Steam [a digital distributor] there's no shelf-space restriction. It's great because they're a bunch of old, orphaned games.
  8. ^ "The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition Tech Info". GameSpot. Archived from the original on April 2, 2010. Retrieved November 15, 2011.
  9. ^ Onyett, Charles (June 2, 2009). "E3 2009: The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition Preview". IGN. Retrieved November 15, 2011.
  10. ^ "Definition of cloning software". PCMAG. Retrieved 2023-08-29.
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