> Maybe, but a better successor would've evolved out of it. > Matlab had Octave as an open source alternative. Not used much, but it inspired the creation of J

> Maybe, but a better successor would've evolved out of it. > Matlab had Octave as an open source alternative. Not used much, but it inspired the creation of Julia. Based on how fast it's evolving Julia will be the superpowered-grandson-of-Matlab :) That's a very contrived argument! If Matlab has inspired the development of other products without ceasing to exist so can (maybe has) Mathematica.