It’s time to free JavaScript (2024) • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by morshu9001 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:07 PM UTC

wiseowise wrote: post #87

1) Put JS in maintenance mode, don’t add any language features, only runtime 2) TS becomes the official mainline, whoever doesn’t like types can just keep writing as they did before, because valid JS is valid TS Problem solved, it’s not that difficult.

Valid JS is often not valid TS. Any nontrivial amount of JS copied into TS will generally not work without tweaks. When people say TS is a superset of JS, it's just some academic definition of syntax supersets that isn't practically true.

Non-exhaustive examples:

    let foo = 2
    foo = "foo"  // TS disallows type change
    let bar = {}
    bar.baz = 2  // TS disallows adding property

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

#292

Post by booleandilemma » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #211

array_key_first wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think normal people don't know the difference between google and a web browser. Even many of the ones that used to understand the difference forgot some time after their primary computing device became a locked down phone.

Can confirm. My wife (who is a very normal person) was using bing the other day and when I pointed it out she asked me what I was talking about and pointed to the chrome browser icon in the taskbar. The level of confusion is almost unfathomable to us.

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

#293

Post by tshaddox » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #217

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…

At this point I'm going to assume that adding -Script to a trademarked name allows me to use that name freely.

Unless that suffixed version is itself already trademarked, like AppleScript.

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

#294

Post by jama211 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

7bit wrote: post #266

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).

> everyone knows Not everybody knows. People who learn JavaScript don't know. In fact, they must learn this. And from my experience, most learning resources don't mention this, let alone teach this. It took me a really long time to understand what ECMAScript is and how it relates to JavaScript. And the effort I put in this understanding... I would have preferred to not having needed that. So no, not everybody knows t…

It’s possible that it also really doesn’t matter that much to the majority of people

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

#295

Post by iberator » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:19 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #180

ndiddy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the original JavaScript press release ( https://web.archive.org/web/20020808041248/http://wp.netscap... ), it's mainly intended as a language to write glue code so Java applets (where the real application logic would go) can interact with a webpage: > With JavaScript, an HTML page might contain an intelligent form that performs loan payment or currency exchange calculations right on the client in response…

The story is somewhat more complicated than that and not amenable to a simple summary, because there are multiple entities with multiple motivations involved. Keeping it simple, the reason why the press release babbles about that is that that is corporate Netscape talking at the height of the Java throat-forcing era. Those of you who were not around for it have no equivalent experience for how Java was being marketed…

wow. Do you have blog? You could totally write a book. Great style and verbose.

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

#296

Post by iberator » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:23 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #180

ndiddy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the original JavaScript press release ( https://web.archive.org/web/20020808041248/http://wp.netscap... ), it's mainly intended as a language to write glue code so Java applets (where the real application logic would go) can interact with a webpage: > With JavaScript, an HTML page might contain an intelligent form that performs loan payment or currency exchange calculations right on the client in response…

The story is somewhat more complicated than that and not amenable to a simple summary, because there are multiple entities with multiple motivations involved. Keeping it simple, the reason why the press release babbles about that is that that is corporate Netscape talking at the height of the Java throat-forcing era. Those of you who were not around for it have no equivalent experience for how Java was being marketed…

Btw. What's your 3 favorite languages then?

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

#297

Post by leptons » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #25

falcor84 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But everyone already calls it JS. I think the transition would have been so much easier if the official name started with "J".

Just rename it to "JS" (jay-ess) and forget about having the letters stand for anything.

Or how about just "J", like "C", and "B" before it.

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

#298

Post by jamesgill » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

It's time to rename JavaScript.

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

#299

Post by gosub100 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:25 PM UTC

karel-3d wrote: post #35

They now have GoFundMe where they are soliciting donations for a discovery phase of a patent trademark cancellation request. They have just 50k USD out of 200k USD they are raising. (No idea if that's appropriate; from the outside, it seems like a lot of money, but also they are fighting Oracle which has unlimited money, so, yeah) For some reason it's not linked in the page itself. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-…

Side question: can the CEO or sole proprietor of a corporation/small business/ nonprofit litigate pro se on behalf of their company? I know you can do this when acting as an individual, but if a business is too poor to afford representation, can they "wing it" as a last ditch measure? Or is it checkmate at that point?

If possible, I would like to see the good guys in these cases go down fighting, and try to delay proceedings and waste as much money of their well-funded opponents as possible.

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

#300

Post by iberator » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:25 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #42

suyash wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is I belive the JavaScript creator wtnted to latch to Java's popularity to called it JavaScript and now both Java and JavaScript are owned by Oracle and they want the name but not want to change is to ECMAScript, it's real official name.

> and now both Java and JavaScript are owned by "Now" makes it sound like this is a recent acquisition of the JavaScript trademark. Oracle obtained it in 2009 as a result of the Sun purchase and if I remember correctly, Sun initially was issued the trademark back in the 90s sometimes.

Well for the majority of us here, Sun acquisition by Oracle was just few years ago. It was a canon event and we still think about it hehe