"A straight clone" it's called a fork mate.

And yes as you said, they are implementing new things that are not planned in XMR and who will improve privacy. What about AEON right now ?

You called a piece of shit a coin with 250k dollars marketcap, two months old with 4 active core devs (more than 90% of the coins), I wonder which one of us will look dumber in 3 months. I leave you there, sad to see crypto community is so full of hatred like always. Good luck with your investment too either way