clone

   1.  An  exact  duplicate:  "Our product is a clone of their product."
   Implies   a   legal   reimplementation   from   documentation  or  by
   reverse-engineering. Also connotes lower price.

   2.  A  shoddy,  spurious  copy:  "Their  product  is  a  clone of our
   product."

   3.  A  blatant  ripoff,  most  likely violating copyright, patent, or
   trade  secret  protections:  "Your product is a clone of my product."
   This use implies legal action is pending.

   4.  [obs]  PC  clone:  a  PC-BUS/ISA/EISA/PCI-compatible  80x86-based
   microcomputer  (this use is sometimes spelled klone or PClone). These
   invariably  have  much more bang for the buck than the IBM archetypes
   they  resemble.  This term fell out of use in the 1990s; the class of
   machines it describes are now simply PCs or Intel machines.

   5. [obs.] In the construction Unix clone: An OS designed to deliver a
   Unix-lookalike   environment  without  Unix  license  fees,  or  with
   additional  `mission-critical' features such as support for real-time
   programming.  {Linux}  and  the  free  BSDs  killed  off this product
   category and the term with it.

   6.  v.  To make an exact copy of something. "Let me clone that" might
   mean  "I want to borrow that paper so I can make a photocopy" or "Let
   me get a copy of that file before you {mung} it".

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {alt}{Big Red Switch}{GCOS}{klone}{lobotomy}{MS-DOS}{NMI}{security through obscurity}]