Migrating from commercial platforms to open source

Covers migrating research code from commercial, license-bound platforms to open source alternatives: MATLAB to Octave or Python/NumPy, IDL to Python, SAS/SPSS/Stata to R or pandas, Mathematica to SymPy/Julia, and the platform-specific pitfalls (indexing, copy semantics, toolbox equivalents, numerical parity). Use when the user wants to leave MATLAB, IDL, SAS, SPSS, Stata, Mathematica, LabVIEW or another proprietary platform, asks for an open or free alternative to commercial scientific software, can no longer afford or access a license, or needs collaborators without licenses to run the code. (The characterization-test safety net and general inherited-code discipline are …