I wish they'd rather use python or Julia. GNU Octave is great. But as a clone of Matlab it's constraint by compatibility and doomed to always be second* and at worst an enabler for Matlab. I'd rather break the dominance that Matlab has in many fields and replace it with free software.

* There are a few aspects where it is better. For example I believe the variable editor introduced one or two releases ago is nicer as it allows inline evaluation.