I don't get the hate here. This is practically a public service and Deno doesn't have any direct or obvious material gains from this. Definitely not more then dozens of other projects (from Chrome to Node.js to Tutorial sites and any company offering something with JS)
So what if they are a VC backed company? If you perform a public service, it's fair to ask the public for money.
No one is suggesting this money would go to fund their product.
It looks more like they aren't getting the adoption that they need, so they go after theater like this, instead of giving us reasons why we should talk IT into allowing Deno in our OS images instead of Node.js.
Who cares if it is JavaScript, ECMAScript, JScript, WhateverScript.
That drama could happen in any ecosystem where developers shoot from the hip adding dependencies without second thought, the same that thought curl | sudo sh is a good idea to start with.
To be that guy: you’re objecting to someone’s subjective phrasing while also using your own subjective phrasing.
Language is malleable and messy, and I find it doesn’t help discourse if you attack the surface reading of a comment. I don’t think OP is “accusing of hate”, I think they’re expressing surprise that such negative sentiments exist to a sensible issue. I agree, as do you it seems.
(And yes, in writing this I asked myself if I’m reacting to your terminology or the intent behind the words. I hope it’s the latter)
The sad reality that you had to tell your stance by saying that you donated in this context otherwise people would've considered you an (anti deno?) in this lawsuit...
I think our actions speak louder than words.
Yes, I think we shouldn't spread hate speech and everyone has their own biases.
We should all preferably write comments in good faith hoping to learn something new from the others point of view.
So this was a fresh breath of view as in that I feel like this might be the best way of not literally accusing others but at the same time, I feel like that there might be some malicious actors or people not acting in completely good faith that can be indirectly supported by not accusing anyone y'know?
If somebody is bringing their personal VC sucks vendetta (I hate VC but I mean I can stand behind donations if they are transparent etc.) into a discussion, its not entirely good faith and shouldn't be accused at a (somewhat?) rate.
I think that the situation imo is that deno might have some good people but it would still be better if it wasn't deno suing them but rather some other preferably non profit which we could donate to that can sue it instead.
I want Deno to succeed. They already have enough challenges between bun and Node taking all of their good ideas and incorporating them. I want the ecosystem to have more options.
This is Oracle we are talking about here. I would cut off my nose to spite Oracle’s face if necessary, they are some of the worst corporate actors in the history of the world. And that is not an exaggeration.
I also desperately want deno to succeed cause it’s just the best way to work with typescript. I have a strong personal interest in working with deno instead of node in the future.
At my company a lot of internal stuff is built with deno. Nothing mission critical but lots of utilities and stuff. But new services are still node, which is basically fine cause all of the complex config is handled already. But all of that complexity still leaks through (whoops can’t use this package because jest can’t find it!)
> they are some of the worst corporate actors in the history of the world. And that is not an exaggeration.
I think that’s an exaggeration. The bar is pretty high (low). The history of the world has The East India Company, The Dutch East India Company, other companies transporting and selling slaves, the various companies that helped carry out The Holocaust, companies directly involved in other genocides, companies directly benefiting from and helping to enforce apartheid, companies pushing opioids, cigarette companies, mining companies etc…
The nightmares of east india company can't be understated.
I can talk to even indian kids, Heck we learnt about east india company in 6th grade so like 10-11 years old & they can tell how they really really exploited india with their indigo plantations etc.
I have nothing against britishers but the fact that they kind of never really paid or literally anyone paid for the amount of exploitation that was carried is absolutely wild, and seem to glorify it from what I see is absolutely ridiculous.
Really shows you that the winners of wars write histories as I can't see how people just shrug off this as if eh yeah it happened ,when lets say the same couldn't be compared to lets say the nazi invasion of poland lets say y'know?
Just as how germany has almost learnt from its nazi history / remembering the pains to not do them again, yet from what I know, britain seems to have glorified it.
Literally millions died due to churchill in the bengal famine. Yet he's celebrated as a war hero which I can understand but why do I feel like critizing that millions of people died because of some guy who did wrong is gonna get me downvotes or get resentment, surely we can all agree that churchill was wrong in that context
I really feel as if the world is a large hypocritical machine.
Nobody forced them into this, they poked the bear thinking it will get them an easy win and good publicity, and are now slowly falling into the abyss.
You're wasting your money. I honestly can't believe the number of people here thinking this is anything but a marketing stunt gone too far. We just had a series of major packages being infected with malware, how about putting $200k towards solving that?
Now that, if successful, would bring real immense benefits to all JS users.
Litigation is not just 'file and forget'. Deno, or any other organisation, needs to contribute in time and effort for several years. In my opinion, "media attention / clout" is a fair compensation.
Sure they benefit, but so do a lot of other people. Sound fair to ask everyone else to pitch in. Deno have already bankrolled this themselves for a while.
Indeed. I once had a former friend say something to the effect of "I wish there were a candidate who had a healthy balance of libertarian values and compassion". I asked him how he reconciles those to diametrically-opposed concepts and he grumbled and we're no longer friends.
I somehow suspect that the reason you aren't friends any more is because you as much as said he lacks compassion. If I had a friend who said that about me, and then refused to apologize for insulting me in that way, I don't know if I would stay friends with them either. It's especially ironic that you are acting in a very uncompassionate way here, while accusing others of not having compassion.
And why would anyone do something good for someone else without an ulterior motive? Do you think people donate to charity because they are good or because they want to seem good? I met people IRL who acted "nice" except they were also aware they were being perceived as "nice" and explicitly called themselves "nice," wouldn't you agree this is hypocritical?
I'm not going to argue that feeling good is an "ulterior" motive, but it can be a malicious one. People can convince themselves, with varying degree of consciousness, that what they are doing is good, and ignorantly feel good about doing that, whereas for other parties what the person did can be the opposite, bad.
Does it matter? If people are kind and generous for the sake of recognition, the positive effects of their actions are just as real.
Not to mention that wanting approval and recognition is not really “ulterior”. It’s a natural human desire. The people to watch out for are those who claim not to want it.
What an absolutely tragic worldview you have... There's no doubt that there are disingenuous people (let alone complete grifters). But the fact that you can't conceive of anyone doing anything good just for the sake of it - let alone making genuine self-sacrifices, which happens ALL the time - is utterly shameful.
Moreover, if you are properly-aligned in life, whats good for others/the world is ALSO good for you. Even those who make genuine self-sacrifices would say so - at the very least, NOT having done it would be the real, unbearable, sacrifice.
I really hope you'll reflect deeply on this, and perhaps that it even haunts you - even if just out of pure self-centeredness, since the only people who you would ever have in your life with a mentality like this would necessarily be completely self-centered as well.
I am only making conclusions based on what I see, and I comment hoping people can tell me how I am wrong. I am still trying to figure this out, but all evidence points to what I said.
People never "do good" "just for the sake of it" - there is always a reason, whether or not the person realizes it. The reason could be, e.g., as I said, the desire to seem good, some kind of religious belief, etc. Ultimately, it is never "just for the sake of it"
I am also disappointed, and I don't know what to do with this, but I am not willing to become some kind of ignorant, delusional lunatic.
Everyone's life experiences and the way we process them are different, which builds our understanding of the world around us in very unique ways. It's not unimaginable for someone to have a worldview as GP's.
Instead of labeling or patronizing them, a bit of tact and compassion go a long way. Otherwise you're just confirming what they're predisposed to think.
You seem to be implying that it is bad because it is marketing, and marketing is bad. But not all forms of marketing are bad. This is a classic association fallacy[1]. In this case, Deno can both improve perception of their brand and reclaim "JavaScript" -- it's a win-win.
It is literally association fallacy. And it is bad because it doesn't lead to a good discussion. Instead of actually talking about whether Deno is doing a good thing, the only way I can respond to "Nah, all forms of marketing are bad." is by saying "no they aren't", which won't change either of our minds and isn't a particularly interesting discussion.
You seem to be saying that Deno reclaiming JavaScript is a bad thing? Why?
I think you misread the comment you're replying to as "I think their chances are good", rather than "I think it speaks well of their character". The latter was how I read it, and I believe the intended meaning.
It's PR. First the petition and now this fundraiser. Sorry but it feels more like a stunt than anything sincere otherwise they would front the money. They certainly have the funds for it.
Getting into a legal battle with oracle would be an incredibly expensive PR effort, especially as they filed and started the process without donations.
$200k is absolutely not going to come close to covering their legal fees possibly in any scenario but definitely if Oracle tries to drag out the process.
Everyone in here jumping to the conclusion that if you say something against the PR shit deno has done. To instantly sucking off Oracle and burning JavaScript flags in the garden. They literally brought it on to themselves and now they want you to pay for it. It's "the last chance" because they made it the last chance. That should be thing discussed in here. A company abusing their reach (60k for the petition) pretending to be guarding the community (millions) while forcing it's hand and also extorting it for money.
Yeah, it's hard for this to feel like a community endeavor when it's a single company deciding to act on behalf of the community while never taking input or building a consensus around the issue with said community.
Hard to not be cynical about the whole thing, especially when it's a private VC backed company doing this and not say the OpenJS Foundation.
Yes. Ryan Dahl has openly said this. It isn't a "gotcha" nor is it something they're hiding.
Tweet from Ryan Dahl:
> I can justify spending money on it because it does get Deno's name out there - blog posts posted to http://deno.com, etc - but without support it's pretty likely our legal bills will dwarf whatever that marketing is worth
The gotcha is them forcing the communities hand here without working with said community. It's despicable business practice and them admitting that it's mainly for show is even worse.
The only possibly related topic that could qualify as a public service would be abolishing trademark. As it is I'd much rather get paid for having to put up with hearing about the damn language.
Isn't that exactly what they're doing here? My understanding is Deno is asking the courts to invalidate Oracle's JavaScript trademark, making it a generic term in the public domain. They are not asking for the mark to be re-assigned to Deno.
Does it matter? When I say deno, you think of the software product deno, produced by deno. Just like when I say coca cola, you think of the specific drink produced by the coca cola company. What I say escalator, you don't think of that specific company's products, but of the staircase conveyor. When I say javascript, do you think of any oracle product? No! So why should users of javascript live in fear of a lawsuite from oracle?
Oh it very much matters. Folks are questioning the legitimacy of this endeavour. It’d be total hypocracy for them to be freeing JavaScript from Oracle and stating trademarks are bad and then to be maintaining similar themselves.
Why do they need to ask for money from the public if they are VC-backed?
Assuming that the Deno Land Inc. company would benefit from protection from Oracle's trademark
As a member of the public I see no "material gains" from "freeing Javascript from Oracle"
But I may be biased. I do not use Javascript and avoid others' use of it as best I can. I use a different object-oriented, garbage-collected scripting language with C-like syntax that is faster than JS, and faster than Lua (not LuaJIT)
> So what if they are a VC backed company? If you perform a public service
VCs have no public service - it’s an oxymoron.
Hence the “hate” though I think cynicism is the more appropriate term
The reality of finance driven organizations is that no matter what, anything that looks like public good will eventually -if not immediately- be used to capture value on behalf of capital to control
> If you perform a public service, it's fair to ask the public for money.
I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too). Especially when you are far richer (like 100+ times richer) than the people you're asking for money.
As a volunteer organizer for a weekly meetup that helps local entrepreneurs, I and my team have never "asked the public for money". Occasionally we have private companies that like what we do and throw some money our way for coffee. It turns out that passion and effort from volunteers and attendees and other members of the startup community are the critical parts of the meetup, and money is not.
So, that gets me wondering what could be done with those $200k besides pay people to get agreement on one particular word being free-er to use. For example, that would fund coffee and breakfast for the meetup for hundreds of years, perhaps even forever. Or fund plenty of other charitable causes with a direct positive impact on people.
> I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too).
I don't think it's reversed.
I coach a high school robotics team (volunteer, unpaid) and last season I went into my pocket for an unknown amount of money, but was not less than $5K and probably closer to $7K.
I'm clearly going to do it anyway; is it wrong for me to go out and seek sponsorships for the team so I don't have to dig quite as deep into my own pocket?
I don't think it's even the tiniest bit wrong nor in any way less-than-charitable.
>I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too). Especially when you are far richer (like 100+ times richer) than the people you're asking for money.
I get the where you're coming from, but it's this exact attitude that ends up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.
If the $200k were going towards such a geek, or towards maintaining code that everyone uses, that'd be better.
As it stands, the money is going to lawyers, who will argue over the right to utter the word "javascript" in a commercial context (rather than, say, "JS"). So zero coding or maintenance.
You're assuming that arguing in court over being allowed to use 1 specific word in a commercial context is a good thing to spend $200,000 on at all, which is quite an assumption, regardless of who does the arguing.
I agree with you that it'd be better if Deno took your suggestion, and spent the money on a Programming Geek, rather than being distracted from their core mission for trivial, semantic matters. The latter is how we actually end up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.
I mean, I'll be the first to admit that I've argued about a word on the internet before, but at no point did it ever cross my mind that I should spend $200,000 doing so.
You have just convinced me to stop using the word J8t. It is not worth even $1 to me to be able to use that word. If Oracle wants to claim ownership, that claim can just be added to the legacy of Oracle. It's a bit stupid to be legally forced to stop using the word, but such is the nature of any discussion involving Oracle.
How about Deno put up $10,000 to sponsor a renaming contest? In honor of Deno, I propose VajaScript.
They don't have the right to do this. Oracle safeguards the JavaScript trademark against abuse with it's powerful legal teams and has a track record of good stewardship. These guys want to hijack their property and let it loose to the wild west. Who knows what unethical actors will do with it..
In my Bizarro world, that is a good thing. Not doing things includes:
* Not monetizing
* Not advertising
* No agendas
* No lawsuits
* No enforcement (other than annoying organizations with C&D letters and then retracting them)
I agree that Oracle has been a perfectly fine trademark holder in all of these regards in that they are entirely irrelevant to JavaScript and have been for as long as I can remember.
The point here is that them not doing those things would be codified. Deno's not trying to take the trademark from them for themselves, they're trying to get the USPTO to agree that JavaScript is a generic term at this point and unable to be trademarked or owned by any one entity.
I'm not sure how that changes any of the bullet points you've got above. It's nice that points 4 and 5 would become completely impossible and not just improbable because the trademark owner currently doesn't care enough to do it.
If they are not using the trademark for anything, at least by US law, I think they do not get to keep it. The point of trademarks is to promote the production of public good, and if they are not in use they are not producing public good, but will consume public resources, like people dealing with C&D letter or the current time and effort from the government on deno's filings.
Most people just call the language "JS" cause Oracle doesn't own that trademark. That's why you wouldn't be able to have a JavascriptConf but we do have JSConf. This is a long-winded way of saying that we already know what people would do with the freedom to speak the name of the language and it's nothing worth fearmongering over...
It's for the courts to determine who had what rights, but it's Oracle that is credibly accused of greatly exceeding the rights given them under the law
I appreciate the thought but this isn’t even a David and Goliath .. this is David’s infant taking on Goliath… Oracle spends more on lawyers than engineers. If this 200k is spent it will be thrown in the garbage. Unless Oracle wants to release it on their own they’ll happily stay in court until every penny Deno has is gone and not think twice about it. Have the team focus on something else.. this isn’t even worth typing up and putting on their website.
they make a good case that the fundraising would go to assembling evidence like surveys, witnesses -- i.e. discovery -- rather than the billable hours. They probably have pro bono attorneys. Any lawyer would love a W against Oracle in a notorious case like this. Their career would be set for life.
> If this 200k is spent it will be thrown in the garbage.
How much will oracle pay to defend that $200k of effort? If the ratio is good enough it still sounds like a worthwhile cause, that is Oracle paying for, in my opinion, holding on to the javascript trademark unduly.
I can't be the only one who believes the name JavaScript should die in Peace. It was and still is the worst naming of any popular programming language in existence.
Apparently the codename for the prototype language was "Mocha", infinitely better! Even the release name "LiveScript" is much better.
They switched for cynical marketing reasons, riding the "Java" hype, and to flaunt their partnership with Sun. Well, it did make some kind of sense at the time when the scope was much smaller. They had this rough idea of an interpreted lightweight companion to Java, back when lots of backends where build with Java and it was meant to be the frontend counterpart for some limited interactivity in the client. But they never got it properly integrated and they diverged very early.
SelfishScript. JavaScript credits Self as inspiration, but misses all the important things about Self.
JavaScript copied:
The name "Java", cynically chosen for marketing misdirection, not technical truth.
The word "prototype" from Self, but turned it into a quirky pseudo-class system. Instead of living objects delegating naturally, with multiple inheritance dynamically changeable at runtime, JavaScript glued on a weird constructor-function pattern that always confuses people, with constructors you have to call with new but can also uselessly call as normal functional foot-guns.
JavaScript missed:
The fluid, live object experience (JavaScript dev environments were never designed around exploration like Self’s Morphic).
The elegance of uniformity (JavaScript bolted on primitives, type coercions, and special cases everywhere).
The idea that the environment mattered as much as the language. Netscape didn’t ship with the kind of rich, reflective tools that made Self shine.
And most important of all: Self's simplicity! The original Self paper (Ungar & Smith, 1987, “Self: The Power of Simplicity”) was all about stripping away everything unnecessary until only a uniform, minimal object model remained. The title wasn’t ornamental, it was the thesis.
Simplicity. Uniformity. Minimal semantics. A clean consistent model you can hold in your head. Less semantic baggage frustrating JIT compiler optimization. Dynamic de-optimization (or pessimization as I like to call it).
Self proved that expressive power comes from radical simplicity.
JavaScript showed that market dominance comes from compromise (worse is better, the selfish gene).
JavaScript should be called SelfishScript because it claimed Self’s legacy but betrayed its central insight: that simplicity is not just aesthetic, it’s the whole design philosophy.
Anecdotally I don't know anyone who cares in the slightest bit about that. It's a name that has been used for a long time, and there have been lots of weird, strange name out there for software, but people just use it and move on.
I think there's some bias at play here. I'd wager that most of management still thinks JavaScript and Java are the same thing, and can't understand why their new frontend hire doesn't know how to work on their Java backend.
No, it still causes confusion from new programmers, HR, execs who thinks JavaScript === writing Java Scripts.
We're all in on TypeScript now and I don't think they're teaching Java much in university or boot camps anymore so it doesn't matter much anyway. But when every other intern came in thinking programming WAS Java.... Not great. Having to never utter "JavaScript" again wasn't the primary motivation to move to TS, but it is a nice side benefit.
NB: But I had an intern say to me one day "did you know TypeScript is just JavaScript with types and a linter?" And I just smiled.
What are they teaching then? I mean, if you're doing a backend - and I don't mean tiny wrapper that wraps user input into queries, I mean the database engine itself - it's Java/Scala or C++ (hopefully not C)? Maybe Go? What else do they choose to teach for heavy industrial backend use?
Please don’t strawman. It’s that kind of exaggerated bad faith argument that propagates anti-intellectualism in society.
I can’t believe I’m having to explain this, but you can show people a car and a carpet and they’ll understand how they differ. But if you show them two different programming languages, most people won’t be able to tell the difference. Just like most people see Chinese and Japanese, Swedish and Finnish, Portuguese and Spanish, and don’t know enough to distinguish one from the other, despite them having different names. They’re just similar-looking symbols organised in different ways.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.
and
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Sure, some recruiters don't know the difference between Java and JavaScript and have no idea of what those job requirements mean. But it looks like a competency issue to me. Have you ever seen a Google opening that confuses Java and JavaScript?
> I don't think they're teaching Java much in university or boot camps anymore so it doesn't matter much anyway
That might just be the bubble you are in. Java is still one of the biggest languages used in corporations across the globes for anything backend related. If it is because it is a modern COBOL or because it actually is a stable language with a solid ecosystem might be a matter of some debate.
In the circles I navigate it is still heavily featured in various bootcamps.
Was thinking the same. Not only would shifting industry to ECMAScript or something else get around trademark nonsense, but now that I think about it I do hear non-techy manager types get confused to this day and call it Java. Also seems like time is right as less is done in plain JavaScript- it’s Typescript, React, framework du jour, WASM.
I guess the hard part is convincing an industry to use a different word.
You'r not the only one: Javascript makes me think of ads; Oracle of Symphony, some restaurant stuff I worked with; hard to describe the experience. Not very safe, designed so normal people are ultra dependent on paid-for support. etc But I'm not here to rant :)
I do find that request outrageous, the true objective hidden, and I still don't grasp what the fuss is about anyway; in what way does it matter does Oracle own the name?
Before being superseded by Python, wasn't JavaScript the world's most used language?
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Oracle fan-boy, but why?
And doesn't Oracle own Java as well? Sure, very different languages, but hard to say the same for the trademarked names, and Java is older.
How about taking energy to do something else, something positive.
'JS' as somone said earlier, is pretty cool.
I actually still thought that was the official name, but I never call it that.
But really, what does it matter? Is Oracle suing people over the term JavaScript? Even if so, can’t they just use the correct term and the rest of us can call it JavaScript?
I guess I just really don’t understand why this is a good use of my donations rather than, say, feeding the hungry, and I don’t mean that to disparage any tech related not for profits or issues.
Sorry, this seriously is an honest question: Is there a typo in your post? Otherwise I must come to the conclusion that you suggest pronouncing JS as 'jiss'.
JS would be hard to trademark now because there’s so many other services using JS as part of their trademark. There’s also already quite a few companies who’ve already registered JS as a trademark.
You also couldn’t call it Jscript because Microsoft owns the trademark there.
EMCAScript is the most practical from a legal standpoint, but that name sucks badly.
Sure, let me just rename all of my file extensions and parsers to .ws and then handle the collisions with websockets paths and then revert it all back to how it was before I touched anything
Sounds really like a development environment problem, I mean if you can't handle that your language suddenly changes it's name in a not backward compatible fashion, how do you ever stand a chance to handle leap seconds correctly?
"The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language." - Donald Knuth
Javascript was never a good name and if they weren't the defacto option to program the web, they would have never made it. I don't know why deno is so eager to get hold of the JS trademark when they have the perfect unencumbered name right there: denolang.
Kinda the other way around right? Java was a popular language at the time so Brendan Eich picked that as part of the name to make his new language more popular.
Maybe. However, he wouldn't have been allowed to choose the name "JavaScript" if Netscape and Sun hadn't been in a business partnership. So my point is still valid. It was just a random ride on the Java wave.
Apparently people don't like the name "ECMA" because it's too close to "Eczema" which is a nasty dry/itchy skin problem. And I agree, because I have it too.
It looks too much like "Acme" so it gets confused as a joke about cartoons. It looks too much like "acne", that is a too common skin problem, and it looks too much like "eczema" that is a rarer nasty-looking skin problem.
Whoever created that name should get a prize.
Anyway, the community not adopting that brand doesn't mean one can't rebrand JS.
ES would be fine. I guess it would conflict with with Spanish domains. But I'm sure we can just continue using .js in the files names... What is the Oracle gonna do? Sue every body who uses .js in the filename?
Well that is an urgency that Deno folks created. So it seems the deed is done.
> After more than 27,000 people signed our open letter to Oracle about the “JavaScript” trademark, we filed a formal Cancellation Petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Ten months in, we’re finally reaching the crucial discovery phase. - Ryan Dahl
You can't make this up. If I was Larry Ellison I would be calling Deno folks personally to thank them.
Oracle has a lot of money and lawyers, and how much of that have they used to actually protect the trademark? Do they sue people for infringement? Do they run ads in trade magazines saying, "hey please don't use our trademark generically"? How much money do they make from owning the trademark? Are they going to spend more than that to defend it?
Reminds me of the urban legend that KFC couldn't legally call itself Kentucky Fried Chicken because they were using genetically modified hens that had no heads, hence the name change to just initials.
What's the point? Move on to Typescript and just call it TS. I never got the hang out of why people tend to add "-script" to the the name of a programming language like it's 1995.
People everywhere saying ecma script is a bad name feels like oracle hired people to hate on the best alternative so that demo keeps "fighting the fight" and make oracle lawyers more rich.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with sound of ecma script (maybe it's just a bit difficult on the tongue?). And not, it doesn't read like eczema, there's absolutely nothing related with that name other than the first two and last characters, reading one and the other they are completely different. It doesn't make sense to say they are similar. Stop with the astroturfing.
Everyone I see hating on ecma script simply say it's a bad name without argumenting or say it's similar to eczema, are we 12 now?
Potentially it could cause confusion between the spec and the language. But tbh I think the mistake was to create that differentiation in the first place. Let's just join these two together and there'll be no more head scratching of what is what.
Oracle has this trademark in numerous countries. Even if this USPTO proceeding cancels it in the US, someone will need to cancel it in every other country to be safe for using it for a global software project/company. Because they filed directly in each country, rather than using the Madrid/WIPO process, a US cancellation doesn't affect the others at all.
(Likewise, even if Oracle wins this, they could still have to spend to defend it in other countries or risk losing it there if challenged.)
I have always wondered why Google didn't buy Sun? They propbably were at the time (and probably still are?) the biggest corporate users of both Java and JavaScript (which, of course, don't share anything beyond the name).
Thank God they didn't. Java could be another abandoned Google project now. OTOH I don't think anybody can say anything bad about what Oracle did and is doing with Java.
Really? Try changing licensing terms every few years until their current commercial license requires paying for every employee whether they use Java or not.
The world would be a much better place if Google had googled Java twenty years ago.
I bet AWS would give them a good run for their money on that metric. I got the impression that Google was predominately a C++ shop, whereas the rumor mills tell me that most of the AWS control plane is in Java (I am pretty sure I've actually gotten a stack trace from an AWS API once or twice, but foolishly I didn't save it)
During that era, SPARC servers were the absolute premium units inside the datacenter. That aligned better with Oracle selling servers than Google, who doesn't sell servers, IMO.
Do you know how many other INFINITELY LESS EXPENSIVE forms of marketing there are? Of course it's marketing, Ryan Dahl even said openly "I can justify spending money on it because it does get Deno's name out there" on Twitter.
But yeah sure this is just an evil plot to get you to use a free MIT licensed runtime or a cloud hosting provider.
Man, if only there were some extremely wealthy companies, like the wealthiest companies in the world, that had a vested interest in "freeing" Javascript that could donate a measley $200k...
It's certainly a bold move for a private company that wants to take a behemoth like Oracle to court over something that mostly benefits themselves to solicit $200K of donations from random people in order to so. I look forward to seeing how that plays out for them.
I personally am a user of JavaScript and don’t care what it is called. Call it FuckScript for what I care. How does this benefit anything other than Deno marketing?
It doesn't matter how much money you raise. Oracle and Larry Ellison can outspend you 100000x, plus they have the ear of the USPTO and the rest of the US political establishment. This is a pointless fight.
I don't get why this is so important. I don't love Oracle. I do love JavaScript. I couldn't care less who owns the trademark, and not sure what if anything would make me care.
Why waste money here instead of justing calling it ecma script or js?
Who cares about java?
Let's just move on. I think it would be a much peittier sight to behold seeing a whole community as a whole change the way they call their language instead of paying 100s of 1000s to some lawyers to fight over a name that's pretty bad in the first place (see the history behind the name, they just wanted to piggyback ride on java as a buzzword).
(please don't astroturf saying ecma script is a bad name, if you don't like it, argument why, don't be 12 saying it looks like eczema, it does not and never did)
> If there are leftover funds, we’ll donate them to the OpenJS to continue defending civil liberties in the digital space. None of the funds will go to Deno
Deno have been bankrolling this case for a pretty long time already. Winning this case will benefit everybody who are benefited by Javascript. Sound fair to ask for everyone else to pitch in.
How? How does it benefit people. The name javascript being trademarked has never affected me once in my life. Especially since its technically Ecmascript and I am technically writing typescript nowadays.
The simple solution is to write everything (for the browser) in TypeScript instead and treat JavaScript only as the compilation target noone actually talks about. And compiling to JavaScript might also become a thing of the past with Webassembly. So, I think we shouldn't care about JavaScript as a name.
Not everyone doing things on the web is a pro developer using typescript. There are millions of use cases for plain-old javascript in the browser to get work done, probably many more cases of that than there are pro developers using typescript.
They could set a smaller target or ask for 1-dollar donations if they’re after maximum exposure. Here’s hoping they actually donate the entire raised amount to a non-profit, because yeah I don’t get the feeling they need the money at all.
200k? I’m not familiar with lawyer / paralegal salaries but I’m assuming it might pay for two paralegals for a year at most? 200k sounds like a very small war chest going up against Oracle. Or is this just to get some awareness?
Is this just about the name? I always thought naming it after a completely unrelated language was a stupid name. I would welcome making ECMAScript the official name. Or Webscript or something would make a lot of sense.
Oracle losing the trademark is just the right thing to happen. Even if Oracle has mythical undefeatable army of lawyers, it's worth it to me to see if there's a chance of common sense prevails for once.
> Help Us Raise $200k to Free JavaScript from Oracle
Sure, just first please become a community-governed non-profit organization whose motivations and interests I am able to scrutinize - and I'll pitch in.
But they don't really go after anyone for it right now, as it's a legal gray area that they haven't really cared to pursue. Forcing the issue will create a judgement (one way or the other) for them to know that it's enforceable if they win. I really hope Deno's lawyers know what they are doing because Oracle has literally unlimited money and legal resources for this kind of thing; it's basically their whole business model.
I wonder if we should just rename JavaScript to something else (not ECMAScript, which is an awful name).
Would be difficult to coordinate, but I think if runtimes start incorporating new naming, there could be enough of a consensus to move away from the JavaScript name entirely and it could become a relic of history.
Personally we should start using EcmaScript that is after all the actual language standard and stop letting Oracle let Java have a free popularity ride on EcmaScript's back.
There is so much resources on the web tied t javascript. Moving onto new name takes massive amounts of effort and will just make people having to keep track of two names when searching the web
JavaScript isn't a generic term. There aren't lots of JavaScripts. Just the one.
If Oracle is going to lose the trademark, which it probably should, the reasoning could be better. How about the fact that Oracle doesn't really offer a service called JavaScript. Isn't abandonment a reason to lose trademark?
"Google" has become a generic term for search engine, like "Jello", "Kleenex", "Kool-Aid," etc. "JavaScript" isn't like that.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Can someone clear this for me?
The grounds for cancellation in the USPTO letter are from both abandonment and genericism (and “fraud on the USPTO”), and Deno’s open letter to Oracle mostly touches on the abandonment issue.
I've kind of become numb to the annoying JavaScript trademark situation. But yeah, it's bonkers. I agree, let's do something. So, if this fails, let's rename JavaScript to WebScript or BrowserScript or something. Nobody can say those aren't generic. And remember, the laughably unpronounceable, caps-lock-enabled, comedy gold that was "ECMAscript" almost caught on for a hot minute. (Can you believe it? We were this close to walking the halls of our big techs and startups and mumbling about "egg-muh-script".) The biggest hurdle will be getting Google to change the name. Google, famously, carefully avoids interacting with the public. I don't know what kind of infohazard they are afraid of contacting from us, but we have to break through that barrier somehow. We may have to resort to standing on the side of the road on the 101 with a sign that says "No more war! Save the dolphins! Accept the JavaScript(TM)-to-WebScript rename now!".
what if everyone agrees to call it JavaZcript, start an online campaign to inform everyone of the reason, and let Oracle fume in the madness of its greed?
There is some help text when clicking on the current goal amount:
> If an organiser turns on automated goal setting, GoFundMe adjusts their goal automatically based on the fundraiser’s characteristics and performance. You can see the goal history if GoFundMe has ever made automatic updates.
> To help the organiser reach their goal, we start them at a lower goal and adjust it as donations come in.
Shower thought conspiracy theory: If the lawsuit looks like it might succeed, Oracle could make it disappear by ... buying Deno. Is their end goal to free javascript or is it to find an exit?
Firstly 200k isn't a lot of money against ORACLE which is a lawyer's level 100 and atleast millions of $
Secondly, it would be really shitty if they think that oracle could buy deno and we can just allow that and continue to cheer on for them.
It would be all hell breaks loose if oracle buys deno and this lawsuit disappears after raising money from public, the people donating would be furious and I feel like that there are already alternatives to deno (bun which is faster) which itself was a alternative to node.
People might as well fork it if comes under oracle possession. Idk
Tbh I agree that deno isn't the best for such lawsuit but rather something that can stand for free speech maybe fsf which deno could directly support and they can do a lawsuit instead?
Oof, fair point. How many people would be able to refuse such an offer? Go live on an island and never have to work again, starting a new project if you get bored, or... keep working on Deno?
This is a reminder that the power of Oracle is not in creating great software, it's in having iron clad lawyers and salespeople[0]. I want this to happen and will contribute, but I think there will be a rude awakening when the anvil falls on our heads.
Seems this was downvoted. Well I for one agree with you.
Looks to me as if deno wants the public goodwill, but isn't willing to put their money where their mouth is. The term "brand awareness campaign" comes to mind.
"ecma" doesn't feel right coming out of my mouth or in my ears. Perhaps because it's sound isn't common in the English language? I'm actually struggling to find any other words right now that sounds similar to ecma.
But to answer your question, here we all are talking about Deno. Can't say if that was their plan all along or not, but it's working.
JavaScript should have been LiveScript if I recall correctly. It was a mistake to put Java in its name, but now everyone has to deal with the fallout. Oracle is still wrong here, but original intent why it didn't end up being LiveScript was to ride on the popularity of Java.
The company that took a screenshot of the nodejs website and used it as evidence for their claim of the trademark? The company that had absolutely nothing to do with nodejs? Ohh.
In 2019, when Oracle renewed the "JavaScript" trademark with the USPTO, they were required to provide evidence of the trademark's "use in commerce." Oracle thought they'd just lazily screenshot the nodejs.org website and use that as part of their evidence, which is absurd.
If normal people did this, they'd probably be sitting in jail.
And accept that both have merit. You may not like it but there's a reason languages, tools, companies, products, whatever become popular. And it isn't just because "people are idiots" or evil companies. Console wars are for teenagers.
Nah. You can be an adult and realise that your feelings don’t mean the world owes you anything, and still think Oracle are a bad company with bad values.
Of course they have merits. But, so what? I didn't dedicate my life to this field to build things that "have merit", but to build great things. And we have great things. It's just that neither Oracle nor JavaScript are among them.
You have no idea whether or not I lack those. If you're going to make a blanket ad-hominem statement like that, at least don't follow it up by agreeing with my point.
Nobody is telling you to build things that just "have merit". Just because you don't like them, it doesn't mean that great things weren't built off the back of Oracle and in JavaScript.
If some Oracle product is the best pick for the task, or JavaScript is the best pick for the task... will you pick it? Or will you whine about what you dedicated your life to?
If you can't see that other people might feel different about this, or be able to build great products with these, maybe you're the one without the imagination and ambition...
I strongly disagree. There are things far, far worse than JavaScript. I would even go so far as calling it "quite decent". I like to use it for prototyping and scripting quite a bit, it can be rather efficient and the "standard library" is very decent in my eyes. It has some footguns, and certainly used to have a couple more (that are discouraged now, but still people complain and call it bad because technically, you can still use the bad parts that any linter refuses). I even really like the idea of protoype-oriented programming and find it a bit sad we lost this in favor of classes, but I guess this actually makes the language a bit easier. Disclaimer: I am not a webdev, and if I do webdev, I use TypeScript. Personally, I consider e.g. Python far worse.
* First-class tensor manipulations (like numpy but in the core language)
* Fast math with the right compiler
* Automatically sized multi dimensional arrays on the stack
* Zero cost C interop
* Minimal runtime, no GC, compiles to small programs
* Generics
* Coarray based parallelism in the core language
Sure it has issues but if you want to write fast numerical code and don’t want to bundle 2GB of pytorch or however big the Julia standard library is, or you want to make a small library with a C API, it’s a pretty great language. There are 50 year old libraries that still work perfectly (and much faster than they did then!) You won’t get that kind of longevity out of Rust ndarray.
Having written one, I'd like to disagree with the "minimal runtime" point. Fortran's I/O system, intrinsic procedures, memory management, and derived types need a lot of code in the runtime support libraries.
I don't get the hate here. This is practically a public service and Deno doesn't have any direct or obvious material gains from this. Definitely not more then dozens of other projects (from Chrome to Node.js to Tutorial sites and any company offering something with JS)
So what if they are a VC backed company? If you perform a public service, it's fair to ask the public for money. No one is suggesting this money would go to fund their product.
Yeah I feel like Deno seems still ok for a VC backed company. They are bring values to the JS dev community, and all their code is open sourced.
Are there any down side to using deno instead of node now days?
If deno is supported, I prefer it to node. But unfortunately node support is still the “standard” for most platforms I’d say.
When you say most platforms, what do you mean?
I’m just curious since I’ve been doing deno for a few years now and haven’t missed node beyond cloning other programs.
It looks more like they aren't getting the adoption that they need, so they go after theater like this, instead of giving us reasons why we should talk IT into allowing Deno in our OS images instead of Node.js.
Who cares if it is JavaScript, ECMAScript, JScript, WhateverScript.
This is a bit of a humorous comment considering the current NPM drama.
That drama could happen in any ecosystem where developers shoot from the hip adding dependencies without second thought, the same that thought curl | sudo sh is a good idea to start with.
Ryan actually had the foresight to add permission sandboxing to deno from the start though
Sandboxing doesn't help against malicious code that changes expected behaviours or corrupt data.
Please do not accuse anyone of "hate" for having a different opinion and expressing it in a way that you do not like.
Btw, I donated.
To be that guy: you’re objecting to someone’s subjective phrasing while also using your own subjective phrasing.
Language is malleable and messy, and I find it doesn’t help discourse if you attack the surface reading of a comment. I don’t think OP is “accusing of hate”, I think they’re expressing surprise that such negative sentiments exist to a sensible issue. I agree, as do you it seems.
(And yes, in writing this I asked myself if I’m reacting to your terminology or the intent behind the words. I hope it’s the latter)
The sad reality that you had to tell your stance by saying that you donated in this context otherwise people would've considered you an (anti deno?) in this lawsuit...
I think our actions speak louder than words.
Yes, I think we shouldn't spread hate speech and everyone has their own biases.
We should all preferably write comments in good faith hoping to learn something new from the others point of view.
So this was a fresh breath of view as in that I feel like this might be the best way of not literally accusing others but at the same time, I feel like that there might be some malicious actors or people not acting in completely good faith that can be indirectly supported by not accusing anyone y'know?
If somebody is bringing their personal VC sucks vendetta (I hate VC but I mean I can stand behind donations if they are transparent etc.) into a discussion, its not entirely good faith and shouldn't be accused at a (somewhat?) rate.
I think that the situation imo is that deno might have some good people but it would still be better if it wasn't deno suing them but rather some other preferably non profit which we could donate to that can sue it instead.
Maybe (node?)
> If somebody is bringing their personal VC sucks vendetta
It’s very hard not to chuckle at their choice of website to express those views
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Imagine the kind of media attention / clout they'll get for "beating Oracle" etc.
They absolutely do get material gains from this, should they succeed.
It'd be a much more legitimate effort if they were just asking people to raise funds for e.g. OpenJS to file suit etc.
I want Deno to succeed. They already have enough challenges between bun and Node taking all of their good ideas and incorporating them. I want the ecosystem to have more options.
This is Oracle we are talking about here. I would cut off my nose to spite Oracle’s face if necessary, they are some of the worst corporate actors in the history of the world. And that is not an exaggeration.
I also desperately want deno to succeed cause it’s just the best way to work with typescript. I have a strong personal interest in working with deno instead of node in the future.
At my company a lot of internal stuff is built with deno. Nothing mission critical but lots of utilities and stuff. But new services are still node, which is basically fine cause all of the complex config is handled already. But all of that complexity still leaks through (whoops can’t use this package because jest can’t find it!)
> because jest
My life is much better for having switched to vitest
Same. Vitest is beautiful
> they are some of the worst corporate actors in the history of the world. And that is not an exaggeration.
I think that’s an exaggeration. The bar is pretty high (low). The history of the world has The East India Company, The Dutch East India Company, other companies transporting and selling slaves, the various companies that helped carry out The Holocaust, companies directly involved in other genocides, companies directly benefiting from and helping to enforce apartheid, companies pushing opioids, cigarette companies, mining companies etc…
The nightmares of east india company can't be understated.
I can talk to even indian kids, Heck we learnt about east india company in 6th grade so like 10-11 years old & they can tell how they really really exploited india with their indigo plantations etc.
I have nothing against britishers but the fact that they kind of never really paid or literally anyone paid for the amount of exploitation that was carried is absolutely wild, and seem to glorify it from what I see is absolutely ridiculous.
Really shows you that the winners of wars write histories as I can't see how people just shrug off this as if eh yeah it happened ,when lets say the same couldn't be compared to lets say the nazi invasion of poland lets say y'know?
Just as how germany has almost learnt from its nazi history / remembering the pains to not do them again, yet from what I know, britain seems to have glorified it.
Literally millions died due to churchill in the bengal famine. Yet he's celebrated as a war hero which I can understand but why do I feel like critizing that millions of people died because of some guy who did wrong is gonna get me downvotes or get resentment, surely we can all agree that churchill was wrong in that context
I really feel as if the world is a large hypocritical machine.
Nobody forced them into this, they poked the bear thinking it will get them an easy win and good publicity, and are now slowly falling into the abyss.
You're wasting your money. I honestly can't believe the number of people here thinking this is anything but a marketing stunt gone too far. We just had a series of major packages being infected with malware, how about putting $200k towards solving that?
Now that, if successful, would bring real immense benefits to all JS users.
Litigation is not just 'file and forget'. Deno, or any other organisation, needs to contribute in time and effort for several years. In my opinion, "media attention / clout" is a fair compensation.
Sure they benefit, but so do a lot of other people. Sound fair to ask everyone else to pitch in. Deno have already bankrolled this themselves for a while.
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Indeed. I once had a former friend say something to the effect of "I wish there were a candidate who had a healthy balance of libertarian values and compassion". I asked him how he reconciles those to diametrically-opposed concepts and he grumbled and we're no longer friends.
I somehow suspect that the reason you aren't friends any more is because you as much as said he lacks compassion. If I had a friend who said that about me, and then refused to apologize for insulting me in that way, I don't know if I would stay friends with them either. It's especially ironic that you are acting in a very uncompassionate way here, while accusing others of not having compassion.
Libertarian values are 0.0% in conflict with compassionate acts. They are in conflict with compelled compassionate acts.
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And why would anyone do something good for someone else without an ulterior motive? Do you think people donate to charity because they are good or because they want to seem good? I met people IRL who acted "nice" except they were also aware they were being perceived as "nice" and explicitly called themselves "nice," wouldn't you agree this is hypocritical?
> And why would anyone do something good for someone else without an ulterior motive?
It feels nice. You should try it sometime.
YeAh bUt fe3lin g0od is n ulTerIor m0t!ve!! A st0!c s4g3 flz nutHing
I'm not going to argue that feeling good is an "ulterior" motive, but it can be a malicious one. People can convince themselves, with varying degree of consciousness, that what they are doing is good, and ignorantly feel good about doing that, whereas for other parties what the person did can be the opposite, bad.
Does it matter? If people are kind and generous for the sake of recognition, the positive effects of their actions are just as real.
Not to mention that wanting approval and recognition is not really “ulterior”. It’s a natural human desire. The people to watch out for are those who claim not to want it.
What an absolutely tragic worldview you have... There's no doubt that there are disingenuous people (let alone complete grifters). But the fact that you can't conceive of anyone doing anything good just for the sake of it - let alone making genuine self-sacrifices, which happens ALL the time - is utterly shameful.
Moreover, if you are properly-aligned in life, whats good for others/the world is ALSO good for you. Even those who make genuine self-sacrifices would say so - at the very least, NOT having done it would be the real, unbearable, sacrifice.
I really hope you'll reflect deeply on this, and perhaps that it even haunts you - even if just out of pure self-centeredness, since the only people who you would ever have in your life with a mentality like this would necessarily be completely self-centered as well.
I am only making conclusions based on what I see, and I comment hoping people can tell me how I am wrong. I am still trying to figure this out, but all evidence points to what I said.
People never "do good" "just for the sake of it" - there is always a reason, whether or not the person realizes it. The reason could be, e.g., as I said, the desire to seem good, some kind of religious belief, etc. Ultimately, it is never "just for the sake of it"
I am also disappointed, and I don't know what to do with this, but I am not willing to become some kind of ignorant, delusional lunatic.
You're a very sad, very confused person. I genuinely mean this: seek help. Or at least a hug.
Everyone's life experiences and the way we process them are different, which builds our understanding of the world around us in very unique ways. It's not unimaginable for someone to have a worldview as GP's.
Instead of labeling or patronizing them, a bit of tact and compassion go a long way. Otherwise you're just confirming what they're predisposed to think.
The parent poster is just countering the argument that Deno gains nothing from this, no need to strawman.
This is a form of marketing.
This is a form of marketing.
As is the existence of Hacker News.
You seem to be implying that it is bad because it is marketing, and marketing is bad. But not all forms of marketing are bad. This is a classic association fallacy[1]. In this case, Deno can both improve perception of their brand and reclaim "JavaScript" -- it's a win-win.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
>But not all forms of marketing are bad. This is a classic association fallacy
This is the classic "I'd accused your argument of being a fallacy so you're wrong and I'm right fallacy".
Nah, all forms of marketing are bad.
It is literally association fallacy. And it is bad because it doesn't lead to a good discussion. Instead of actually talking about whether Deno is doing a good thing, the only way I can respond to "Nah, all forms of marketing are bad." is by saying "no they aren't", which won't change either of our minds and isn't a particularly interesting discussion.
You seem to be saying that Deno reclaiming JavaScript is a bad thing? Why?
Well, ECMAScript is not owned by Oracle, and people can use that.
Marketing is a very wide field, even focusing on good service and good product is a form of marketing
>focusing on good service and good product is a form of marketing
Only if we stretch the meaning of term beyond any reasonable bounds.
It's effective. I feel positively about anyone willing to take Oracle to court.
I hope this is sarcasm.
Larry Ellison is now the wealthiest person on earth and Oracle is an incredibly litigious rent-seeking law firm masquerading as a tech company.
Good luck and godspeed to anyone with the balls to think that taking them on is a good idea.
I think you misread the comment you're replying to as "I think their chances are good", rather than "I think it speaks well of their character". The latter was how I read it, and I believe the intended meaning.
Fair point - apologies for the confusion.
It’s a little late for hockey stick growth though, no?
It's PR. First the petition and now this fundraiser. Sorry but it feels more like a stunt than anything sincere otherwise they would front the money. They certainly have the funds for it.
Getting into a legal battle with oracle would be an incredibly expensive PR effort, especially as they filed and started the process without donations.
$200k is absolutely not going to come close to covering their legal fees possibly in any scenario but definitely if Oracle tries to drag out the process.
That feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face. You can be in favor insofar as it's a public service and otherwise disregard.
Everyone in here jumping to the conclusion that if you say something against the PR shit deno has done. To instantly sucking off Oracle and burning JavaScript flags in the garden. They literally brought it on to themselves and now they want you to pay for it. It's "the last chance" because they made it the last chance. That should be thing discussed in here. A company abusing their reach (60k for the petition) pretending to be guarding the community (millions) while forcing it's hand and also extorting it for money.
Yeah, it's hard for this to feel like a community endeavor when it's a single company deciding to act on behalf of the community while never taking input or building a consensus around the issue with said community.
Hard to not be cynical about the whole thing, especially when it's a private VC backed company doing this and not say the OpenJS Foundation.
>To instantly sucking off Oracle
Do not anthropenisize Larry Ellison.
Yes. Ryan Dahl has openly said this. It isn't a "gotcha" nor is it something they're hiding. Tweet from Ryan Dahl:
> I can justify spending money on it because it does get Deno's name out there - blog posts posted to http://deno.com, etc - but without support it's pretty likely our legal bills will dwarf whatever that marketing is worth
The gotcha is them forcing the communities hand here without working with said community. It's despicable business practice and them admitting that it's mainly for show is even worse.
The only possibly related topic that could qualify as a public service would be abolishing trademark. As it is I'd much rather get paid for having to put up with hearing about the damn language.
Isn't that exactly what they're doing here? My understanding is Deno is asking the courts to invalidate Oracle's JavaScript trademark, making it a generic term in the public domain. They are not asking for the mark to be re-assigned to Deno.
Seems a worthy community contribution on first glance.
Just to check on a maybe obvious question, Deno is not trademarked is it?
Does it matter? When I say deno, you think of the software product deno, produced by deno. Just like when I say coca cola, you think of the specific drink produced by the coca cola company. What I say escalator, you don't think of that specific company's products, but of the staircase conveyor. When I say javascript, do you think of any oracle product? No! So why should users of javascript live in fear of a lawsuite from oracle?
Oh it very much matters. Folks are questioning the legitimacy of this endeavour. It’d be total hypocracy for them to be freeing JavaScript from Oracle and stating trademarks are bad and then to be maintaining similar themselves.
You aren’t addressing the argument, which is that the word Deno is not similar to the word JavaScript.
Also Deno is not claiming that trademarks are bad, they’re claiming that JavaScript is a commonly used term.
I don't agree. I don't think of Oracle at all when I think of JavaScript. And I also don't care whether they own the trademark.
There's no hypocrisy.
"So what if they are a VC-backed company?"
Why do they need to ask for money from the public if they are VC-backed?
Assuming that the Deno Land Inc. company would benefit from protection from Oracle's trademark
As a member of the public I see no "material gains" from "freeing Javascript from Oracle"
But I may be biased. I do not use Javascript and avoid others' use of it as best I can. I use a different object-oriented, garbage-collected scripting language with C-like syntax that is faster than JS, and faster than Lua (not LuaJIT)
Why are you being cryptic about it?
> So what if they are a VC backed company? If you perform a public service
VCs have no public service - it’s an oxymoron.
Hence the “hate” though I think cynicism is the more appropriate term
The reality of finance driven organizations is that no matter what, anything that looks like public good will eventually -if not immediately- be used to capture value on behalf of capital to control
> If you perform a public service, it's fair to ask the public for money.
I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too). Especially when you are far richer (like 100+ times richer) than the people you're asking for money.
As a volunteer organizer for a weekly meetup that helps local entrepreneurs, I and my team have never "asked the public for money". Occasionally we have private companies that like what we do and throw some money our way for coffee. It turns out that passion and effort from volunteers and attendees and other members of the startup community are the critical parts of the meetup, and money is not.
So, that gets me wondering what could be done with those $200k besides pay people to get agreement on one particular word being free-er to use. For example, that would fund coffee and breakfast for the meetup for hundreds of years, perhaps even forever. Or fund plenty of other charitable causes with a direct positive impact on people.
> I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too).
I don't think it's reversed.
I coach a high school robotics team (volunteer, unpaid) and last season I went into my pocket for an unknown amount of money, but was not less than $5K and probably closer to $7K.
I'm clearly going to do it anyway; is it wrong for me to go out and seek sponsorships for the team so I don't have to dig quite as deep into my own pocket?
I don't think it's even the tiniest bit wrong nor in any way less-than-charitable.
>I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too). Especially when you are far richer (like 100+ times richer) than the people you're asking for money.
I get the where you're coming from, but it's this exact attitude that ends up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.
If the $200k were going towards such a geek, or towards maintaining code that everyone uses, that'd be better.
As it stands, the money is going to lawyers, who will argue over the right to utter the word "javascript" in a commercial context (rather than, say, "JS"). So zero coding or maintenance.
Programming Geeks cannot argue in court. Only lawyers can. So the money is going to the right place ?
You're assuming that arguing in court over being allowed to use 1 specific word in a commercial context is a good thing to spend $200,000 on at all, which is quite an assumption, regardless of who does the arguing.
I agree with you that it'd be better if Deno took your suggestion, and spent the money on a Programming Geek, rather than being distracted from their core mission for trivial, semantic matters. The latter is how we actually end up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.
I mean, I'll be the first to admit that I've argued about a word on the internet before, but at no point did it ever cross my mind that I should spend $200,000 doing so.
You have just convinced me to stop using the word J8t. It is not worth even $1 to me to be able to use that word. If Oracle wants to claim ownership, that claim can just be added to the legacy of Oracle. It's a bit stupid to be legally forced to stop using the word, but such is the nature of any discussion involving Oracle.
How about Deno put up $10,000 to sponsor a renaming contest? In honor of Deno, I propose VajaScript.
err... Vajascript
They don't have the right to do this. Oracle safeguards the JavaScript trademark against abuse with it's powerful legal teams and has a track record of good stewardship. These guys want to hijack their property and let it loose to the wild west. Who knows what unethical actors will do with it..
The entire point is that oracle has done nothing with the trademark - especially not being a good steward. What bizarro world are you living in?
> oracle has done nothing with the trademark
In my Bizarro world, that is a good thing. Not doing things includes:
I would like it to remain as it is.I agree that Oracle has been a perfectly fine trademark holder in all of these regards in that they are entirely irrelevant to JavaScript and have been for as long as I can remember.
The point here is that them not doing those things would be codified. Deno's not trying to take the trademark from them for themselves, they're trying to get the USPTO to agree that JavaScript is a generic term at this point and unable to be trademarked or owned by any one entity.
I'm not sure how that changes any of the bullet points you've got above. It's nice that points 4 and 5 would become completely impossible and not just improbable because the trademark owner currently doesn't care enough to do it.
If they are not using the trademark for anything, at least by US law, I think they do not get to keep it. The point of trademarks is to promote the production of public good, and if they are not in use they are not producing public good, but will consume public resources, like people dealing with C&D letter or the current time and effort from the government on deno's filings.
Freedom is all very well until someone decides they are free to come and take your stuff, or lie about you, or pretend to be you.
For example, low effort trolling, or self-propagating supply chain attacks.
Most people just call the language "JS" cause Oracle doesn't own that trademark. That's why you wouldn't be able to have a JavascriptConf but we do have JSConf. This is a long-winded way of saying that we already know what people would do with the freedom to speak the name of the language and it's nothing worth fearmongering over...
It's for the courts to determine who had what rights, but it's Oracle that is credibly accused of greatly exceeding the rights given them under the law
I appreciate the thought but this isn’t even a David and Goliath .. this is David’s infant taking on Goliath… Oracle spends more on lawyers than engineers. If this 200k is spent it will be thrown in the garbage. Unless Oracle wants to release it on their own they’ll happily stay in court until every penny Deno has is gone and not think twice about it. Have the team focus on something else.. this isn’t even worth typing up and putting on their website.
they make a good case that the fundraising would go to assembling evidence like surveys, witnesses -- i.e. discovery -- rather than the billable hours. They probably have pro bono attorneys. Any lawyer would love a W against Oracle in a notorious case like this. Their career would be set for life.
I know there are all kinds of lawyers and pro bono work and such. But $200k sounds like a tiny pittance in lawyer world
> If this 200k is spent it will be thrown in the garbage.
How much will oracle pay to defend that $200k of effort? If the ratio is good enough it still sounds like a worthwhile cause, that is Oracle paying for, in my opinion, holding on to the javascript trademark unduly.
But surely it counts for something than Deno has the facts on their side?
I can't be the only one who believes the name JavaScript should die in Peace. It was and still is the worst naming of any popular programming language in existence.
Apparently the codename for the prototype language was "Mocha", infinitely better! Even the release name "LiveScript" is much better.
They switched for cynical marketing reasons, riding the "Java" hype, and to flaunt their partnership with Sun. Well, it did make some kind of sense at the time when the scope was much smaller. They had this rough idea of an interpreted lightweight companion to Java, back when lots of backends where build with Java and it was meant to be the frontend counterpart for some limited interactivity in the client. But they never got it properly integrated and they diverged very early.
We should call it UnTypedScript
SelfishScript. JavaScript credits Self as inspiration, but misses all the important things about Self.
JavaScript copied:
The name "Java", cynically chosen for marketing misdirection, not technical truth.
The word "prototype" from Self, but turned it into a quirky pseudo-class system. Instead of living objects delegating naturally, with multiple inheritance dynamically changeable at runtime, JavaScript glued on a weird constructor-function pattern that always confuses people, with constructors you have to call with new but can also uselessly call as normal functional foot-guns.
JavaScript missed:
The fluid, live object experience (JavaScript dev environments were never designed around exploration like Self’s Morphic).
The elegance of uniformity (JavaScript bolted on primitives, type coercions, and special cases everywhere).
The idea that the environment mattered as much as the language. Netscape didn’t ship with the kind of rich, reflective tools that made Self shine.
And most important of all: Self's simplicity! The original Self paper (Ungar & Smith, 1987, “Self: The Power of Simplicity”) was all about stripping away everything unnecessary until only a uniform, minimal object model remained. The title wasn’t ornamental, it was the thesis.
Simplicity. Uniformity. Minimal semantics. A clean consistent model you can hold in your head. Less semantic baggage frustrating JIT compiler optimization. Dynamic de-optimization (or pessimization as I like to call it).
Self proved that expressive power comes from radical simplicity.
JavaScript showed that market dominance comes from compromise (worse is better, the selfish gene).
JavaScript should be called SelfishScript because it claimed Self’s legacy but betrayed its central insight: that simplicity is not just aesthetic, it’s the whole design philosophy.
Anecdotally I don't know anyone who cares in the slightest bit about that. It's a name that has been used for a long time, and there have been lots of weird, strange name out there for software, but people just use it and move on.
I think there's some bias at play here. I'd wager that most of management still thinks JavaScript and Java are the same thing, and can't understand why their new frontend hire doesn't know how to work on their Java backend.
No, it still causes confusion from new programmers, HR, execs who thinks JavaScript === writing Java Scripts.
We're all in on TypeScript now and I don't think they're teaching Java much in university or boot camps anymore so it doesn't matter much anyway. But when every other intern came in thinking programming WAS Java.... Not great. Having to never utter "JavaScript" again wasn't the primary motivation to move to TS, but it is a nice side benefit.
NB: But I had an intern say to me one day "did you know TypeScript is just JavaScript with types and a linter?" And I just smiled.
What are they teaching then? I mean, if you're doing a backend - and I don't mean tiny wrapper that wraps user input into queries, I mean the database engine itself - it's Java/Scala or C++ (hopefully not C)? Maybe Go? What else do they choose to teach for heavy industrial backend use?
> No, it still causes confusion from new programmers, HR, execs who thinks JavaScript === writing Java Scripts.
Anyone that stupid in 2025 is hopeless.
Intelligence has nothing to do with it. You can’t deduce JavaScript and Java aren’t related, you have to be told/read that.
Neither you can deduce that car and carpet aren't related. For god's sake, even cars have carpets inside to add to the confusion!
Please don’t strawman. It’s that kind of exaggerated bad faith argument that propagates anti-intellectualism in society.
I can’t believe I’m having to explain this, but you can show people a car and a carpet and they’ll understand how they differ. But if you show them two different programming languages, most people won’t be able to tell the difference. Just like most people see Chinese and Japanese, Swedish and Finnish, Portuguese and Spanish, and don’t know enough to distinguish one from the other, despite them having different names. They’re just similar-looking symbols organised in different ways.
>I can’t believe I’m having to explain this
You shouldn't, the guy arguing with is you is most likely an idiot, or trolling.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.
and
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
HN Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Why is someone who has no understanding of anything related to the material running HR at this fictional company?
> Please don’t strawman. It’s that kind of exaggerated bad faith argument that propagates anti-intellectualism in society.
Sure. Now I'm guilty of all the anti-intellectualism we are seeing, and the propagandists get to walk free, but ok.
It takes 30 seconds to learn it for life
You can if you work in this industry and care about anything you do.
And yet they are everywhere. I really wish I was allowed to do my own resume screening. Instead HR tells me who to interview.
Sure, some recruiters don't know the difference between Java and JavaScript and have no idea of what those job requirements mean. But it looks like a competency issue to me. Have you ever seen a Google opening that confuses Java and JavaScript?
> I don't think they're teaching Java much in university or boot camps anymore so it doesn't matter much anyway
That might just be the bubble you are in. Java is still one of the biggest languages used in corporations across the globes for anything backend related. If it is because it is a modern COBOL or because it actually is a stable language with a solid ecosystem might be a matter of some debate.
In the circles I navigate it is still heavily featured in various bootcamps.
This give me the idea of creating a dontion site that allow the user to donate in favor of a cause, but also against.
Use only one variable that can go negative. The plaform keeps "only" the money on the losing side X2. For the lols.
In these days and age of hate and confrontation, whos knows it may work.
Was thinking the same. Not only would shifting industry to ECMAScript or something else get around trademark nonsense, but now that I think about it I do hear non-techy manager types get confused to this day and call it Java. Also seems like time is right as less is done in plain JavaScript- it’s Typescript, React, framework du jour, WASM. I guess the hard part is convincing an industry to use a different word.
JS is better and you can make it a recurisve backronym. JS stands for: JS Script.
Probably to close to JScript, not sure if Microsoft cares enough to sue though.
They always care later when money is available and they need a new way to damage their brand.
I'm in favor of calling it ()=>{}, pronounced TLFKAJ (The Language Formerly Known As Javascript).
Yet somehow ECMAScript was a worse name.
I think of JavaScript as Eczema.
Honestly, the screw up was right there.
Honestly think Go is worse. So hard to google anything about it.
Add lang and that solves that issue. Although I agree that is a stupid name.
You'r not the only one: Javascript makes me think of ads; Oracle of Symphony, some restaurant stuff I worked with; hard to describe the experience. Not very safe, designed so normal people are ultra dependent on paid-for support. etc But I'm not here to rant :)
I do find that request outrageous, the true objective hidden, and I still don't grasp what the fuss is about anyway; in what way does it matter does Oracle own the name? Before being superseded by Python, wasn't JavaScript the world's most used language? Don't get me wrong, I'm no Oracle fan-boy, but why? And doesn't Oracle own Java as well? Sure, very different languages, but hard to say the same for the trademarked names, and Java is older. How about taking energy to do something else, something positive. 'JS' as somone said earlier, is pretty cool.
I’m sure JS will Google well.
All in favor of WebScript raise your hands! :-P
...I am 1000x more in favor of *.ws instead of "Michael Jackson" of *.mjs
I don’t know why they didn’t go with the more obvious esm since it’s ecmascript modules
We should rename it as BrowserScript. The .bs extension is a funny bonus.
The name "JavaScript" was silly to begin with, just a way to make the buzzword "Java" more popular. Let's call it WebScript and move on.
Aparently it is fine if you take an existing, trademarked language name and just add `Script` to the end of it.
Obviously we should just call it JavaScriptScript.
It does seem that rebranding would just fix the problem. I don’t really understand why the name is worth fighting over.
Didn’t we try that experiment already with ECMAScript? Have you met anyone using it? Me neither.
I can’t wait for the “well actually” comments.
I actually still thought that was the official name, but I never call it that.
But really, what does it matter? Is Oracle suing people over the term JavaScript? Even if so, can’t they just use the correct term and the rest of us can call it JavaScript?
I guess I just really don’t understand why this is a good use of my donations rather than, say, feeding the hungry, and I don’t mean that to disparage any tech related not for profits or issues.
I'm not even sure how to correctly say ECMAScript out loud.
ee-see-ehm-ay-skript? It's ECK-mah-script.
Why not “JS”? Then we can all take sides in a religious war on whether it’s pronounced jay-ess, jayce, juss, or jess?
It’s pronounced gay-ess. Just like GIF.
Sorry, this seriously is an honest question: Is there a typo in your post? Otherwise I must come to the conclusion that you suggest pronouncing JS as 'jiss'.
Can't we all get along? "jizz" and "gay-ass" are both perfectly good.
JS would be hard to trademark now because there’s so many other services using JS as part of their trademark. There’s also already quite a few companies who’ve already registered JS as a trademark.
You also couldn’t call it Jscript because Microsoft owns the trademark there.
EMCAScript is the most practical from a legal standpoint, but that name sucks badly.
Yeah, but that's what is needed.
An un-trademark-eable term.
What you need is the opposite: a trademarked name but one where a community-managed nonprofit foundation owns.
That’s how other languages (eg Perl and Python) manage their assets. And the ecosystem is better for it.
>Perl
>Python
>And the ecosystem is better for it.
AHAHAHAHAHH
I take it form your reply that you either misunderstood my comment or you think the constant threat of litigation from Oracle is a good thing.
Either way, you come off as incredibly naïve.
Sure, let me just rename all of my file extensions and parsers to .ws and then handle the collisions with websockets paths and then revert it all back to how it was before I touched anything
Sounds really like a development environment problem, I mean if you can't handle that your language suddenly changes it's name in a not backward compatible fashion, how do you ever stand a chance to handle leap seconds correctly?
Is this sarcastic? Hard to tell.
Most code doesn't need to handle leap seconds at all.
So you think that Oracle must receive $200k, and that's the only way you can keep the legacy `.js` extension for your files.
The money isn't going to Oracle. It will be going to Deno's lawyers and, to a smaller extent, the US government.
"The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language." - Donald Knuth
Javascript was never a good name and if they weren't the defacto option to program the web, they would have never made it. I don't know why deno is so eager to get hold of the JS trademark when they have the perfect unencumbered name right there: denolang.
They don’t want to get hold of the trademark, they want to cancel it altogether. IMO it’s an important distinction
Kinda the other way around right? Java was a popular language at the time so Brendan Eich picked that as part of the name to make his new language more popular.
Pretty sure Brendan Eich had nothing to do with the name JavaScript. That was a name cooked up by the marketing department.
That is correct: in Brendan's own words: https://youtu.be/XOmhtfTrRxc?si=5J7LrNIaNo-_GNf7&t=99 (starts at 1:39)
Maybe. However, he wouldn't have been allowed to choose the name "JavaScript" if Netscape and Sun hadn't been in a business partnership. So my point is still valid. It was just a random ride on the Java wave.
We can also call it ECMAScript. I always try to refer to it as ES instead of JS in professional coding context.
Apparently people don't like the name "ECMA" because it's too close to "Eczema" which is a nasty dry/itchy skin problem. And I agree, because I have it too.
Ironically EczemaScript is still a better name than ECMAScript.
It looks too much like "Acme" so it gets confused as a joke about cartoons. It looks too much like "acne", that is a too common skin problem, and it looks too much like "eczema" that is a rarer nasty-looking skin problem.
Whoever created that name should get a prize.
Anyway, the community not adopting that brand doesn't mean one can't rebrand JS.
AcmeScript!
Every line of code has a chance to explode in your face.
...
Wait that's just normal JavaScript-
> And I agree, because I have it too.
Eczema or ECMaScript?
If there's a name even stupider than JavaScript it's ECMAScript.
I would like to be able to pronounce the name in a sensible quick fashion based on how it is written. ;)
For "WebScript" that works. Even just "JS" works. For "ECMAScript" not so much.
ES would be fine. I guess it would conflict with with Spanish domains. But I'm sure we can just continue using .js in the files names... What is the Oracle gonna do? Sue every body who uses .js in the filename?
Why not HPVscript?
CancerScript perhaps?
How about EichScript, or ES for short :-D
Oracle probably has a hundred lawyers that make more than $200k per year.
If Deno tries to half-ass this case, they will be doing the JavaScript community a disservice by creating court precedent for Oracle.
if they dont do this, there wont be an opportunity for another case..
Well that is an urgency that Deno folks created. So it seems the deed is done.
> After more than 27,000 people signed our open letter to Oracle about the “JavaScript” trademark, we filed a formal Cancellation Petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Ten months in, we’re finally reaching the crucial discovery phase. - Ryan Dahl
You can't make this up. If I was Larry Ellison I would be calling Deno folks personally to thank them.
Exactly this. Poor judgement on the part of Deno's leaders.
Oracle has a lot of money and lawyers, and how much of that have they used to actually protect the trademark? Do they sue people for infringement? Do they run ads in trade magazines saying, "hey please don't use our trademark generically"? How much money do they make from owning the trademark? Are they going to spend more than that to defend it?
Oracle is like the magic word that makes me want to give money to causes. Which I rarely do or wish to do.
I kinda want Oracle to go further and insist that no-one can call it "JavaScript" any more. Let's all it "JS" and completely break from Java.
"What does JS stand for?" "It stands for itself."
Reminds me of the urban legend that KFC couldn't legally call itself Kentucky Fried Chicken because they were using genetically modified hens that had no heads, hence the name change to just initials.
php stands for php hyper processing. js could stand for js script.
"What doesn't it stand for? It stands for commitment. It stands for audacity. It stands for courage in the face of..."
Let's all it "JS" and completely break from Java
or, you know, its alter ego ECMAScript? ES for short.
Nobody likes that name, stop
I don't like it, but I dislike it less than I dislike the name JavaScript.
I like it. Maybe some people don't like it.
I said stop
"What does JS stand for?" "Because it can't sit down! rimshot"
What's the point? Move on to Typescript and just call it TS. I never got the hang out of why people tend to add "-script" to the the name of a programming language like it's 1995.
[dead]
Surprised by the amount of mentions of ECMAScript here. It’s the worst possible name to me.
People everywhere saying ecma script is a bad name feels like oracle hired people to hate on the best alternative so that demo keeps "fighting the fight" and make oracle lawyers more rich.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with sound of ecma script (maybe it's just a bit difficult on the tongue?). And not, it doesn't read like eczema, there's absolutely nothing related with that name other than the first two and last characters, reading one and the other they are completely different. It doesn't make sense to say they are similar. Stop with the astroturfing.
Everyone I see hating on ecma script simply say it's a bad name without argumenting or say it's similar to eczema, are we 12 now?
Potentially it could cause confusion between the spec and the language. But tbh I think the mistake was to create that differentiation in the first place. Let's just join these two together and there'll be no more head scratching of what is what.
Sounds like eczema :(
Too bad there's no topical creme to get rid of it.
I vote we rename it MOCHAScript, which is my favorite coffee beverage.
ECMAScript comes from the spec for JavaScript, which makes sense.
GotchaScript
JabbaScript
ECMAScript is the base language.
Javascript is that base + a layer on top .. 'navigator' object, etc.
It won't be called anything other than EcmaScript because there are already millions of references to that name.
meh.
'Java' script was a ridiculous choice which has lead to much confusion.
For all I care it could be called mozillascript (would be historically more 'correct')
otoh anything Oracle wants is bad by default so...
Petition to rename it to SillyScript
Care to state why?
Oracle has this trademark in numerous countries. Even if this USPTO proceeding cancels it in the US, someone will need to cancel it in every other country to be safe for using it for a global software project/company. Because they filed directly in each country, rather than using the Madrid/WIPO process, a US cancellation doesn't affect the others at all.
(Likewise, even if Oracle wins this, they could still have to spend to defend it in other countries or risk losing it there if challenged.)
According to Wikipedia, JavaScript first appeared on December 4th, 1995, as a part of Netscape Navigator. The name was LiveScript in beta versions.
Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle) made the application for the trademark[1] on December 1st, 1995. The trademark was issued on May 6th, 1997.
[1]https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75026640&caseType=SERIAL_...
I they had stuck with LiveScript, we'd be using LSON ("Ell-Son") as a data format.
Another bullet dodged, since saying Ellison 3 times in a row would cause a gaggle of lawyers to appear in the room
I have always wondered why Google didn't buy Sun? They propbably were at the time (and probably still are?) the biggest corporate users of both Java and JavaScript (which, of course, don't share anything beyond the name).
Thank God they didn't. Java could be another abandoned Google project now. OTOH I don't think anybody can say anything bad about what Oracle did and is doing with Java.
Really? Try changing licensing terms every few years until their current commercial license requires paying for every employee whether they use Java or not.
The world would be a much better place if Google had googled Java twenty years ago.
If you’re not using OpenJDK, you brought this on yourself.
> the biggest corporate users of both Java
I bet AWS would give them a good run for their money on that metric. I got the impression that Google was predominately a C++ shop, whereas the rumor mills tell me that most of the AWS control plane is in Java (I am pretty sure I've actually gotten a stack trace from an AWS API once or twice, but foolishly I didn't save it)
During that era, SPARC servers were the absolute premium units inside the datacenter. That aligned better with Oracle selling servers than Google, who doesn't sell servers, IMO.
"This is just marketing"
Do you know how many other INFINITELY LESS EXPENSIVE forms of marketing there are? Of course it's marketing, Ryan Dahl even said openly "I can justify spending money on it because it does get Deno's name out there" on Twitter.
But yeah sure this is just an evil plot to get you to use a free MIT licensed runtime or a cloud hosting provider.
Kinda hard to justify a gofundme for a vc backed company with 21m in a series A round...
This is not just for their own personal benefit, it’s for the whole community. Why spend their funding on the court case
Man, if only there were some extremely wealthy companies, like the wealthiest companies in the world, that had a vested interest in "freeing" Javascript that could donate a measley $200k...
This Bryan Cantrill quote is relevant any time Oracle comes up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2305s
I miss that world so much. People used to care.
Add typescript support as default to browsers and drop "javascript" alltogether. Problem solved.
> If we don’t win discovery, Oracle locks in ownership of the word “JavaScript.” This is the decisive moment.
One more reason to move away from it and finally get some sanity back in webdev.
What alternative do you propose to Javascript for interactive functionality on a web page?
ecmascript?
we could always use wasm, right?
WASM doesn't have a DOM API, as far as I know.
It does not. It interacts with browser APIs (not just dom) via JavaScript. And it needs to load a big binary first.
> finally get some sanity back in webdev
Like nested <table>s and 1x1 transparent spacer GIFs?
It's certainly a bold move for a private company that wants to take a behemoth like Oracle to court over something that mostly benefits themselves to solicit $200K of donations from random people in order to so. I look forward to seeing how that plays out for them.
> mostly benefits themselves
This is incorrect. All users of Javascript benefit.
I personally am a user of JavaScript and don’t care what it is called. Call it FuckScript for what I care. How does this benefit anything other than Deno marketing?
How
How?
It doesn't matter how much money you raise. Oracle and Larry Ellison can outspend you 100000x, plus they have the ear of the USPTO and the rest of the US political establishment. This is a pointless fight.
I don't get why this is so important. I don't love Oracle. I do love JavaScript. I couldn't care less who owns the trademark, and not sure what if anything would make me care.
Why waste money here instead of justing calling it ecma script or js?
Who cares about java?
Let's just move on. I think it would be a much peittier sight to behold seeing a whole community as a whole change the way they call their language instead of paying 100s of 1000s to some lawyers to fight over a name that's pretty bad in the first place (see the history behind the name, they just wanted to piggyback ride on java as a buzzword).
(please don't astroturf saying ecma script is a bad name, if you don't like it, argument why, don't be 12 saying it looks like eczema, it does not and never did)
> If there are leftover funds, we’ll donate them to the OpenJS to continue defending civil liberties in the digital space. None of the funds will go to Deno
So donate money for Deno's marketing campaign?
Deno have been bankrolling this case for a pretty long time already. Winning this case will benefit everybody who are benefited by Javascript. Sound fair to ask for everyone else to pitch in.
How? How does it benefit people. The name javascript being trademarked has never affected me once in my life. Especially since its technically Ecmascript and I am technically writing typescript nowadays.
It's going to be hard to fight a company that has $600 billion in revenues coming their way--just from one customer!
Who definitely can pay it ;)
The simple solution is to write everything (for the browser) in TypeScript instead and treat JavaScript only as the compilation target noone actually talks about. And compiling to JavaScript might also become a thing of the past with Webassembly. So, I think we shouldn't care about JavaScript as a name.
JavaScript is a nice compilation target because with a few extra flags, it’s actually very readable.
I am fairly sure Microsoft owns the typescript trademark.
I used https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/ and didn't find it listed there. It used to belong to Lotus.
It seems that MS has not trademarked TypeScript.
Yes you are right, apparently not TypeScript or TS.
Shouldn't someone trademark it quickly before a bad actor does?
Not everyone doing things on the web is a pro developer using typescript. There are millions of use cases for plain-old javascript in the browser to get work done, probably many more cases of that than there are pro developers using typescript.
Can’t deno afford $200k without any help?
They can. It'd be better if they asked other orgs and individuals to publicly support the task, even without funding it.
Its to raise awareness
They could set a smaller target or ask for 1-dollar donations if they’re after maximum exposure. Here’s hoping they actually donate the entire raised amount to a non-profit, because yeah I don’t get the feeling they need the money at all.
They would receive even more blow-back for $1 dollnations from HN here.
advertise their business* and raise more VC money
200k? I’m not familiar with lawyer / paralegal salaries but I’m assuming it might pay for two paralegals for a year at most? 200k sounds like a very small war chest going up against Oracle. Or is this just to get some awareness?
Is this just about the name? I always thought naming it after a completely unrelated language was a stupid name. I would welcome making ECMAScript the official name. Or Webscript or something would make a lot of sense.
I donated.
Oracle losing the trademark is just the right thing to happen. Even if Oracle has mythical undefeatable army of lawyers, it's worth it to me to see if there's a chance of common sense prevails for once.
> Help Us Raise $200k to Free JavaScript from Oracle
Sure, just first please become a community-governed non-profit organization whose motivations and interests I am able to scrutinize - and I'll pitch in.
Awesome cause Deno, of course I'll help.
Maybe this is the chance to finally get rid of “Java” from JavaScript. My vote goes to WebScript.
This seems a bit like poking the bear. A loss here could give Oracle carte blanche to start going after people for using "JavaScript" anywhere.
That's literally what is being fought for...
>That's literally what is being fought for...
But they don't really go after anyone for it right now, as it's a legal gray area that they haven't really cared to pursue. Forcing the issue will create a judgement (one way or the other) for them to know that it's enforceable if they win. I really hope Deno's lawyers know what they are doing because Oracle has literally unlimited money and legal resources for this kind of thing; it's basically their whole business model.
I wonder if we should just rename JavaScript to something else (not ECMAScript, which is an awful name).
Would be difficult to coordinate, but I think if runtimes start incorporating new naming, there could be enough of a consensus to move away from the JavaScript name entirely and it could become a relic of history.
It won't be called anything other than EcmaScript because there are already millions of references to that name.
Such an awful name! From that perspective, a $200k legal battle makes total sense in comparison.
Should we truly donate or do we have no chance in hell? Seems like we are not in the right political climate to score a win here.
Personally we should start using EcmaScript that is after all the actual language standard and stop letting Oracle let Java have a free popularity ride on EcmaScript's back.
I think there are better ways to spend $200k than fight with deranged patent/trademark system.
tbf, with how long these court cases go... result will be decided by next or even after-next political force
I had no idea there was a JavaScript trademark and that Oracle had it! How did they get there? If it were Java I get it, but JavaScript?
I also wonder what's the non-brand way to refer to it. JS? EcmaScript? The Browser Language Formerly Known as JavaScript?
I raise my free hand to vote for naming the useable subset of JavaScript … JS - the Oracle be my witness.
It’s not even a good name, let them have it and lets pick something better.
There is so much resources on the web tied t javascript. Moving onto new name takes massive amounts of effort and will just make people having to keep track of two names when searching the web
Maybe that’s a good thing.
PHP needs to shed its image as a crufty language because modern PHP is written differently, I’m sure “the old way” of JS has many similar warts.
I don't understand it, nodejs use JavaScript on their website like many other e.g. vue , what's will 200k throwing away solves?
200k could do much more in the js ecosystem than just a word.
Willing to send something Denos way on this. Best of luck
I don’t understand why a for-profit company is asking me for money for something they want to do.
Where does Node stands on this?
JavaScript isn't a generic term. There aren't lots of JavaScripts. Just the one.
If Oracle is going to lose the trademark, which it probably should, the reasoning could be better. How about the fact that Oracle doesn't really offer a service called JavaScript. Isn't abandonment a reason to lose trademark?
"Google" has become a generic term for search engine, like "Jello", "Kleenex", "Kool-Aid," etc. "JavaScript" isn't like that.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Can someone clear this for me?
The grounds for cancellation in the USPTO letter are from both abandonment and genericism (and “fraud on the USPTO”), and Deno’s open letter to Oracle mostly touches on the abandonment issue.
I can't believe no one has referenced YavaScript yet.
I remember a period where people just called it EcmaScript - so use that
They should just change it back to Mocha.
They should just revert the name to Mocha.
I've kind of become numb to the annoying JavaScript trademark situation. But yeah, it's bonkers. I agree, let's do something. So, if this fails, let's rename JavaScript to WebScript or BrowserScript or something. Nobody can say those aren't generic. And remember, the laughably unpronounceable, caps-lock-enabled, comedy gold that was "ECMAscript" almost caught on for a hot minute. (Can you believe it? We were this close to walking the halls of our big techs and startups and mumbling about "egg-muh-script".) The biggest hurdle will be getting Google to change the name. Google, famously, carefully avoids interacting with the public. I don't know what kind of infohazard they are afraid of contacting from us, but we have to break through that barrier somehow. We may have to resort to standing on the side of the road on the 101 with a sign that says "No more war! Save the dolphins! Accept the JavaScript(TM)-to-WebScript rename now!".
what if everyone agrees to call it JavaZcript, start an online campaign to inform everyone of the reason, and let Oracle fume in the madness of its greed?
Script is not a problem. It’s “Java” that is trademarked.
Change it to EllisonScript
The gofundme is now saying $55k target... Which is it?
There is some help text when clicking on the current goal amount:
> If an organiser turns on automated goal setting, GoFundMe adjusts their goal automatically based on the fundraiser’s characteristics and performance. You can see the goal history if GoFundMe has ever made automatic updates.
> To help the organiser reach their goal, we start them at a lower goal and adjust it as donations come in.
I'd contribute to free us from JavaScript
Alt names: JS, ECMAScript (ES?), WebScript (WS?)
WS is already taken by the WebSocket ws://… protocol.
Who has Oracle sued, and what progress has it stopped, that Oracle owns the trademark to JS? Genuine question. Who actually cares?
Adopt TS as official browser language and kill JS. Since JS is valid TS, it will be literally a drop in replacement. Easy peasy.
why not just ask larry ellison directly?
If you know his phone number maybe someone would volunteer to give him a call.
I will volunteer for $200k
Shower thought conspiracy theory: If the lawsuit looks like it might succeed, Oracle could make it disappear by ... buying Deno. Is their end goal to free javascript or is it to find an exit?
Firstly 200k isn't a lot of money against ORACLE which is a lawyer's level 100 and atleast millions of $
Secondly, it would be really shitty if they think that oracle could buy deno and we can just allow that and continue to cheer on for them.
It would be all hell breaks loose if oracle buys deno and this lawsuit disappears after raising money from public, the people donating would be furious and I feel like that there are already alternatives to deno (bun which is faster) which itself was a alternative to node.
People might as well fork it if comes under oracle possession. Idk
Tbh I agree that deno isn't the best for such lawsuit but rather something that can stand for free speech maybe fsf which deno could directly support and they can do a lawsuit instead?
Oof, fair point. How many people would be able to refuse such an offer? Go live on an island and never have to work again, starting a new project if you get bored, or... keep working on Deno?
GraalJs is still right there
This is a reminder that the power of Oracle is not in creating great software, it's in having iron clad lawyers and salespeople[0]. I want this to happen and will contribute, but I think there will be a rude awakening when the anvil falls on our heads.
[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/why-use-oracle-db-today
save your money and pick a better name than javascript
Er... or spend the let me check 6 months loaded cost of one of your devs and do it yourself.
Seems this was downvoted. Well I for one agree with you.
Looks to me as if deno wants the public goodwill, but isn't willing to put their money where their mouth is. The term "brand awareness campaign" comes to mind.
Can we do ZFS next?
I have donated and was immensely disappointed the donations thus far are about $16K.
note to self: take HN righteous indignations less seriously.
no thanks, ecmascript already is a fine name why don't we just start using it more since thats what it is
why deno so hung up on this? why not focus getting people to use deno instead?
"ecma" doesn't feel right coming out of my mouth or in my ears. Perhaps because it's sound isn't common in the English language? I'm actually struggling to find any other words right now that sounds similar to ecma.
But to answer your question, here we all are talking about Deno. Can't say if that was their plan all along or not, but it's working.
I know what you mean, sounds like AcneScript.
Yeah there you go my teenage angst resurfacing after all these years
EczemaScript, to me.
EcmaScript is high on the list of reasons you don’t let devs name products.
didn't deno raise $25M
JavaScript should have been LiveScript if I recall correctly. It was a mistake to put Java in its name, but now everyone has to deal with the fallout. Oracle is still wrong here, but original intent why it didn't end up being LiveScript was to ride on the popularity of Java.
sequoia money angry that oracle money has trademark that nobody enforces or respects anyway
downvoting everyone who asks a question in good faith is what makes ryan dahl and deno the matt mullenweg and wordpress of javascript runtimes
Can we just stop transpiling typescript and only run that instead?
In seriousness though, this does seem like a distraction from real work
People need distraction sometimes.
Sorry but I'm not going to sponsor you stealing a company's trademark.
The company that took a screenshot of the nodejs website and used it as evidence for their claim of the trademark? The company that had absolutely nothing to do with nodejs? Ohh.
I didn’t know nodejs existed in 1995?
In 2019, when Oracle renewed the "JavaScript" trademark with the USPTO, they were required to provide evidence of the trademark's "use in commerce." Oracle thought they'd just lazily screenshot the nodejs.org website and use that as part of their evidence, which is absurd.
If normal people did this, they'd probably be sitting in jail.
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Well, it's oracle, so as far as I'm concerned anything that hurts them or their IP is a legitimate public service.
That said, it does seem more than a little cheeky for a VC backed company to open up a public gofundme for this.
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Grow up.
And accept that both have merit. You may not like it but there's a reason languages, tools, companies, products, whatever become popular. And it isn't just because "people are idiots" or evil companies. Console wars are for teenagers.
Nah. You can be an adult and realise that your feelings don’t mean the world owes you anything, and still think Oracle are a bad company with bad values.
You lack imagination and ambition.
Of course they have merits. But, so what? I didn't dedicate my life to this field to build things that "have merit", but to build great things. And we have great things. It's just that neither Oracle nor JavaScript are among them.
You have no idea whether or not I lack those. If you're going to make a blanket ad-hominem statement like that, at least don't follow it up by agreeing with my point.
Nobody is telling you to build things that just "have merit". Just because you don't like them, it doesn't mean that great things weren't built off the back of Oracle and in JavaScript.
If some Oracle product is the best pick for the task, or JavaScript is the best pick for the task... will you pick it? Or will you whine about what you dedicated your life to?
If you can't see that other people might feel different about this, or be able to build great products with these, maybe you're the one without the imagination and ambition...
I strongly disagree. There are things far, far worse than JavaScript. I would even go so far as calling it "quite decent". I like to use it for prototyping and scripting quite a bit, it can be rather efficient and the "standard library" is very decent in my eyes. It has some footguns, and certainly used to have a couple more (that are discouraged now, but still people complain and call it bad because technically, you can still use the bad parts that any linter refuses). I even really like the idea of protoype-oriented programming and find it a bit sad we lost this in favor of classes, but I guess this actually makes the language a bit easier. Disclaimer: I am not a webdev, and if I do webdev, I use TypeScript. Personally, I consider e.g. Python far worse.
Learn ASP or VBA and embrace true suffering
ASP could be written in JScript and was the OG JavaScript SSR.
In some ways, easier to understand and better than anything we have now.
Do everything in serverside cgi programs, at least until WebAssembly disposes of the currently necessary JS wrappers to access the DOM.
Floss their teeth? Don't drink too much? Research before they vote?
Go back to pen and paper.
Working in my punch cards as we speak.
I mean, Fortran still exists.
Fortran is pretty great:
* First-class tensor manipulations (like numpy but in the core language)
* Fast math with the right compiler
* Automatically sized multi dimensional arrays on the stack
* Zero cost C interop
* Minimal runtime, no GC, compiles to small programs
* Generics
* Coarray based parallelism in the core language
Sure it has issues but if you want to write fast numerical code and don’t want to bundle 2GB of pytorch or however big the Julia standard library is, or you want to make a small library with a C API, it’s a pretty great language. There are 50 year old libraries that still work perfectly (and much faster than they did then!) You won’t get that kind of longevity out of Rust ndarray.
Having written one, I'd like to disagree with the "minimal runtime" point. Fortran's I/O system, intrinsic procedures, memory management, and derived types need a lot of code in the runtime support libraries.
So does COBOL.
I hereby cast my vote for shcript, short and sweet; think of it as a way of calling it what it is without using the S word.