The software uses an open-source programming language

A list of open-source programming languages can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_programming_languages

▶ If you don't know where to start, or considering to move to a new language, have a look to the related guideline #58 . This shall ensure a wider user base and possibly collaborative development with the Argo community.

#### ‼️ About the Matlab language

Although Matlab remains popular in oceanography and academic, _Matlab is not a programming language released under an open-source license_. Therefore any Matlab codebase cannot fulfil the present guideline.

If you'd rather categorise your Matlab codebase as an **[Octave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Octave)** language codebase to make it _open source_, you need to ensure that your codebase is indeed functional with the free [Octave software](https://octave.org/download), which cannot be taken for granted.

But since:
> Octave treats incompatibility with MATLAB as a bug.

Matlab code developers are encouraged to migrate to Octave, in a sense that they should, at least, systematically test their software with Octave. If that is done with success, we can consider this guideline followed. Developers are then encouraged to mention explicitly that the software is Octave compatible.