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Help us raise $200k to free JavaScript from Oracle

deno.com

201–210 of 374 posts

Re: Help us raise $200k to free JavaScript from Oracle

#201
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: * Not monetizing * Not advertising * No agendas * No lawsuits * No enforcement (other than annoying organizations with C&D letters and then retracting them) 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.

Re: Help us raise $200k to free JavaScript from Oracle

#203

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.

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

Re: Help us raise $200k to free JavaScript from Oracle

#204
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 T…

[deleted]

Re: Help us raise $200k to free JavaScript from Oracle

#206
post #88

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 typi…

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.

Re: Help us raise $200k to free JavaScript from Oracle

#207

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…

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.

Re: Help us raise $200k to free JavaScript from Oracle

#209

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.

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

So you think that Oracle must receive $200k, and that's the only way you can keep the legacy `.js` extension for your files.

Re: Help us raise $200k to free JavaScript from Oracle

#210

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.
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