In
computing, a clone is
hardware or
software that is designed to function in exactly the same way as another system. 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 some reasons, including competition,
standardization
Standardization or standardisation is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that include firms, users, interest groups, standards organizations and governments. Standardization ...
, availability across platforms, and even as
homage
Homage (Old English) or Hommage (French) may refer to:
History
*Homage (feudal) /ˈhɒmɪdʒ/, the medieval oath of allegiance
*Commendation ceremony, medieval homage ceremony Arts
*Homage (arts) /oʊˈmɑʒ/, an allusion or imitation by one arti ...
.
Compatibility
Compatibility may refer to:
Computing
* Backward compatibility, in which newer devices can understand data generated by older devices
* Compatibility card, an expansion card for hardware emulation of another device
* Compatibility layer, compon ...
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
Hardware clones
When
IBM announced the
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...
in 1981, other companies such as
Compaq decided to offer clones of the PC as a legal reimplementation from the PC's documentation or
reverse engineering
Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
. Because most of the components, except the PC's
BIOS
In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...
, were publicly available, all Compaq had to do was reverse-engineer the BIOS. The result was a machine with similar performance and lower price than the machines cloned. The use of the term "PC clone" to describe
IBM PC compatible computers fell out of use in the 1990s; the class of machines it now describes are simply called PCs, but the early use of the term "clone" usually implied a higher level of compatibility with the original IBM PC than "PC-Compatible", with (often Taiwanese) clones of the original circuit (and possibly ROMs) the most compatible (in terms of software they would run and hardware tests they would pass), while "legitimate" new designs such as the
Sanyo MBC-550
The Sanyo MBC-550 is a small and inexpensive personal computer in "pizza-box" style, featuring an Intel 8088 microprocessor and running a version of MS-DOS. Sold by Sanyo, it was the least expensive early IBM PC compatible.
The MBC-550 has much ...
and
Data General One
The Data General/One (DG-1) was a laptop introduced in 1984 by Data General.
Description
The nine-pound battery-powered 1984 Data General/One ran MS-DOS and had dual 3.5" diskettes, a 79-key full-stroke keyboard, 128 KB to 512 KB of RAM, and a m ...
, while not infringing on copyrights and adding innovations, tended to fail some compatibility tests strongly dependent upon detailed hardware compatibility (such as ability to run
Microsoft Flight Simulator, or any software that bypassed the standard
software interrupts and directly accessed hardware at the expected pre-defined locations, or—in the case of the MBC-550 for example—wrote 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,
IBM,
HP,
Dell
Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies.
Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...
). 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
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...
.
Hardware remakes
Examples for hardware remakes are e.g. recent home computer remakes.
A special kind of hardware remakes are
emulators which implement the hardware functionality completely in software. For instance the
WinUAE emulator software tries to behave exactly like a physical
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
.
Software
Software can be cloned by
reverse engineering
Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
or legal reimplementation from documentation or other sources, or by observing a program's appearance and behavior. The reasons for software cloning may include circumventing undesirable licensing fees, acquiring knowledge about the features of the system or creating an
interoperable alternative for an unsupported
platform.
GNU, a clone of
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
''Lotus Dev. Corp. v. Borland Int'l, Inc.'', 516 U.S. 233 (1996), is a United States Supreme Court case that tested the extent of software copyright.. The lower court had held that copyright does not extend to the user interface of a computer progr ...
'' 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,
Electronic Arts, via its
Maxis division, put forth a lawsuit against
Zynga, claiming that its 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''.
The two companies settled out of court on undisclosed terms in February 2013.
Examples of software cloning include the
ReactOS
ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system for amd64/i686 personal computers intended to be binary-compatible with computer programs and device drivers made for Windows Server 2003 and later versions of Windows. ReactOS has been noted a ...
project which tries to clone
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
, and
GNU Octave, which treats incompatibility with
MathWorks MATLAB as a bug.
Video games
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 clone
First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...
s. In the 2000s the
open world action-adventure ''
Grand Theft Auto'' inspired the creation of many
''Grand Theft Auto'' clones.
Software remakes
Remakes of software are revivals of old, obsolete, or discontinued software (e.g.
Abandonware).
A good share of software remakes are
Fangames of
computer games
A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-deter ...
and
Game engine recreation made by the
fan community
A fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of empathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the objects of their fandom and spend a significant ...
as part of
retrogaming, to address e.g.
compatibility
Compatibility may refer to:
Computing
* Backward compatibility, in which newer devices can understand data generated by older devices
* Compatibility card, an expansion card for hardware emulation of another device
* Compatibility layer, compon ...
issues or non-availability of the original, e.g. a shutdown server gets substituted with a
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
digital distribution lowers the investment risk for niche releases.
When enhanced in some way (audio, graphics, etc.) new releases might be called "High definition" release or "Special edition", an example is ''
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition''.
Other uses of the term
Databases
A
database clone is a complete and separate copy of a database system that includes the business data, the
DBMS software and any other application tiers that make up the environment. Cloning is a different kind of operation to
replication
Replication may refer to:
Science
* Replication (scientific method), one of the main principles of the scientific method, a.k.a. reproducibility
** Replication (statistics), the repetition of a test or complete experiment
** Replication crisi ...
and
backup
In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...
s 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
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
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.
Programming
{{main, Cloning (programming)
In
computer programming, particularly
object-oriented programming, ''
cloning'' refers to
object copying by a method or
copy factory function, often called
clone
or
copy
, as opposed to by a
copy constructor
In class-based, object-oriented programming, a constructor (abbreviation: ctor) is a special type of subroutine called to create an object. It prepares the new object for use, often accepting arguments that the constructor uses to set required ...
. 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
*
Clean room design
*
Plug compatible
*
Video game clone
*
Video game remake
*
Game engine recreation
*
:Computer hardware clones
*
:Video game console remakes
References
Computing terminology