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It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)

javascript.tm

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Re: It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)

#241

Post by bad_haircut72 »

dev0p wrote: post #208
alberth wrote: post #177

Silly question: how are people negatively impacted by the trademark of "JavaScript"? Because in practice, isn't this a bit like "Kleenex" - where everyone knows you mean "tissue" (EMCAScript).

The fact that you wrote it wrong is hilariously ironic. JavaScript is simply the better term, and marketing is everything. Reminds me of Java's POJOs, which was a very simple pattern that no one used, until someone gave them a fancy name. ECMAScript is a horrible technical name. Might as well call it ACMEScript considering how willie e. coyote it feels to develop with it...

it sounds like eczema - naming your programming language after a skin condition is not a great choice

nothing against people with eczema of course

Re: It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)

#242

Post by striking »

TeaVMFan wrote: post #223
StableAlkyne wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less the fact that someone owns JS's trademark, and more that it's specifically Oracle (they got it when they bought Sun). Oracle is an incredibly litigious company. Their awful reputation in this respect means that the JS ecosystem can never be sure they won't swoop in and attempt to demand rent someday. This is made worse by the army of lawyers they employ; even if they're completely in the wrong, whatever pro…

The incredibly litigious company here is Deno. Deno sued on a whim, realized they were massively unprepared, then asked the public to fund a legal campaign that will benefit Deno themselves, a for-profit, VC-backed company. This personal vendetta will likely end with the community unable to use the term JavaScript. Nobody should support this.

Your comment seems incredibly confused.

1. Oracle is the litigious one here. My favorite example is that time they attacked a professor for publishing less-than-glowing benchmarks of their database: https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ What's to stop them from suing anyone using the term JavaScript in a way that isn't blessed by them? That's what Deno is trying to protect against.

2. Deno is filing a petition to cancel the trademark, not claim it themselves. This would return it to the public commons.

It should be obvious from these two facts that any member of the public that uses JavaScript should support this, regardless of what they think of Deno-the-company.

Re: It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)

#244

Post by Capricorn2481 »

array_key_first wrote: post #192
spider-mario wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard anyone do that. Do “normal” people even discuss JavaScript?

I think normal people are actually aware what JS and HTML are. Most people are more tech savvy than we give them credit - or credit they might give themselves.

Maybe 1 in 10000 people who aren't developers.

Re: It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)

#247

Post by bartread »

embedding-shape wrote: post #17
siwatanejo wrote: post #3

I actually think that people should rather use EcmaScript name instead of JavaScript, because it's a way better name (much less confusing, given that this lang doesn't have anything to do with Java anyway). I wish Oracle started suing people to force everyone to use the better name.

> because it's a way better name (much less confusing, given that this lang doesn't have anything to do with Java anyway). Probably if we were in the early 2000s this could have been a battle worth fighting. But considering we're in 2025 and probably more people are aware of JavaScript than Java at this point, even when you're deep in enterprise-land, I'm not sure it'd be less confusing. Anyways, you're about two dec…

Yeah, I agree with you. I remember being annoyed by the name in 1999 because, as you say, JavaScripts's not got much to do with Java other than both languages being superficially C-like... but I don't see it as being confusing for more time than it takes to read introductory tutorials for each language.

There are more important battles to fight.

Re: It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)

#248

Post by bartread »

shagie wrote: post #179
embedding-shape wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it's a way better name (much less confusing, given that this lang doesn't have anything to do with Java anyway). Probably if we were in the early 2000s this could have been a battle worth fighting. But considering we're in 2025 and probably more people are aware of JavaScript than Java at this point, even when you're deep in enterprise-land, I'm not sure it'd be less confusing. Anyways, you're about two dec…

From days of old... Invoking Applet Methods From JavaScript Code - https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/in... and Invoking JavaScript Code From an Applet - https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/in... Aside from the "Java is cool, name everything Java" in the early days - there was scripting between the browser and the applet using a language named JavaScript.

I actually used this back in the day: once at university, and then again for a telecoms project in my first job.

But it doesn't mean there's much commonality - beyond superficially C-like syntax - between the languages, and certainly not between their "standard libraries" (aka the browser APIs in JavaScript's case).

Re: It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)

#249

Post by pak9rabid »

_fat_santa wrote: post #200

Honest question for companies like Oracle, Google and Microsoft that own the trademark to Javascript, Go and Typescript respectively. What value does it bring to these companies to own these trademarks? The only case I can really see is someone going off and creating another language and then proceeding to call it, Javascript, Typscript or Go and then using the same logo but I feel at that point the developer communi…

Well, look at how Microsoft tried to hijack the JVM back in the 90s. I think the big fear is that somebody creates a "mostly compatible" product, that in fact isn't 100% compatible, and tries to market it as the same thing as the original, which in fact isn't the original.

Re: It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)

#250

Post by msgilligan »

dev0p wrote: post #208
alberth wrote: post #177

Silly question: how are people negatively impacted by the trademark of "JavaScript"? Because in practice, isn't this a bit like "Kleenex" - where everyone knows you mean "tissue" (EMCAScript).

The fact that you wrote it wrong is hilariously ironic. JavaScript is simply the better term, and marketing is everything. Reminds me of Java's POJOs, which was a very simple pattern that no one used, until someone gave them a fancy name. ECMAScript is a horrible technical name. Might as well call it ACMEScript considering how willie e. coyote it feels to develop with it...

POJO is one of my favorite acronyms. Along with POTS and COTS.

POTS = Plain Old Telephony System COTS = Commercial Off-The-Shelf

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