from Hacker News

Oracle, it's time to free JavaScript

by jeremiahlee on 9/16/24, 3:56 PM with 125 comments

• by cxr on 9/16/24, 5:46 PM

  This is a stupid non-issue. You can go ahead and call it JavaScript despite what Oracle does or doesn't say.

  Better yet, though: don't call it JavaScript—call it JS. "JavaScript" is and always was a dumb name. "JS" is not only fine, but better—and not because "JS" is particularly good, but because "JavaScript" itself isn't exactly hard to beat.

  The only thing left to do is for the spec authors (which includes signatories to this petition) and the rest of TC-39 to say so; the next edition of ECMA-262 should modify the existing disclaimer in the preface about "JavaScript" being an Oracle trademark to state unequivocally that "JavaScript"—an unfortunate vestige of an ill-considered marketing decision in the 1900s—is a deprecated way to refer to the language not otherwise terribly well-known as ECMAScript and that the recommended way to refer to it is simply as "JS".

• by kragen on 9/16/24, 6:45 PM

  i don't think oracle does anything in order to earn goodwill or because it's the right thing. they're structurally immune to moral suasion. don't forget that oracle was the company that sued google for the independent reimplementation of java they used in android. if you want oracle to do something, you either need to offer them a lot of money or level an extremely credible, well-financed legal threat at them

  as agumonkey implicitly points out in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41559110, though, 'java' is the name of the world's most popular island. i wonder if the indonesian government could be persuaded to support the trademark revocation

• by whartung on 9/16/24, 5:01 PM

  They're clinging to it because of the "java" part, not the "script" part.

  And they'll hold on to that tightly.

  The most manifest example of this is simply what they made the Eclipse org jump through when they dropped, now, "Jakarta" EE. That was not a small rock in the Java pond at the time when we had to go through the Great Renaming.

  But they did it anyway because the packages used to be named "javax", and Oracle was not going to let that go.

• by elzbardico on 9/16/24, 6:57 PM

  People falling in the ages old trap of antropormophizing Oracle executives.

• by OptionOfT on 9/16/24, 4:49 PM

  Does Oracle actually defend it? Isn't the rule behind a trademark that you actually need to enforce it?

  VELCRO(r) has this song about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY

  Edit: as I watched the video again I finally caught on the fact that RollerBlades are a brand of inline-skates. In Belgium we called them inline-skates.

  It's interesting to see how brands-as-identifiers change based on language and countries. My Walloon friend calls tape Scotch, but I don't.

• by alberth on 9/16/24, 4:38 PM

  There’s lots of colloquially used names by the general public that technically infringe trademark.

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_generici...

  “Aspirin”, “elevators”, “laundromat” are just a few examples.

  Even “App Store” was trademarked (by Apple).

• by looperhacks on 9/16/24, 4:13 PM

  The letter makes points that the trademark is already abandoned. I'm not familiar with trademark laws, but if the trademark is already abandoned, why the need for the letter?

• by Animats on 9/16/24, 5:34 PM

  Oracle's claims to be making "use in commerce" of Javascript are listed here: [1]

  There's a link to the non-Oracle page for node.js download, and to Oracle Javascript Extension Toolkit. Weak, but arguable.

  [1] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn75026640&docI...

• by ARandomerDude on 9/16/24, 4:33 PM

  I thought this was just another internet rant until I got to the bottom of the page:

  > Sincerely,

  > Ryan Dahl - creator of Node.js

  > Brendan Eich - creator of JavaScript

  > Michael Ficarra - editor of the JavaScript spec

  > Rich Harris - creator of Svelte

  > Isaac Z. Schlueter - creator of npm

  > Feross Aboukhadijeh - CEO of Socket

  > James M Snell - member of Node.js TSC

  > Wes Bos - host of Syntax.fm

  > Scott Tolinski - host of Syntax.fm

  > and 191 more members of the JavaScript community

• by ivanjermakov on 9/16/24, 4:43 PM

  > and it is causing widespread, unwarranted confusion and disruption

  In what way? I don't see any immediate benefits.

• by gmiller123456 on 9/16/24, 4:41 PM

  The article kinda glossed over how Sun got the trademark: "As a result of this partnership...". What does "this" refer to? Using the same syntax?

• by vidzert on 9/16/24, 9:02 PM

  According to comments in this post, it appears that Oracle is defending the use of the name "JavaScript" in some cases. However, the internet is filled with various resources that use "JavaScript" in their names. I'm curious if there are any confirmed instances of Oracle suing someone for using this name, or if these are just false rumors and Oracle is merely reserving the right to do so in the future.

• by orev on 9/16/24, 7:28 PM

  When JavaScript was introduced, Java was already gaining traction, and the name JavaScript was chosen to ride on the coattails of that popularity. From that perspective, there’s a pretty good argument in favor of whoever holds the Java trademark, which happens to be Oracle.

  I have definitely run into people who say things like “they wrote a Java script”, which actually turned out to be a Java program.

• by znpy on 9/16/24, 4:29 PM

  Or maybe shall we all start calling it EcmaScript?

  If anything to break with the old (IE6 and similar) javascripts that are still there, running somewhere.

• by nashashmi on 9/16/24, 6:09 PM

  What issues is this causing among developers? I personally think JS should be sunsetted and spun off as a set of 2nd gen languages like typescript and rust and Ecma. It is clear that Oracle is not working on JS. The browsers are. The w3c is(?). Let them coalesce onto a spin off version. Like WebScript.

• by Borborygymus on 9/16/24, 7:44 PM

  It's long gone the time people should stop doing business with Oracle.

• by theanonymousone on 9/16/24, 4:47 PM

  The HN title is wrong. The missing word significantly changes the meaning.

• by jonny_eh on 9/16/24, 4:51 PM

  Oracle still uses Java though. You can't spell JavaScript without Java. Regardless, JavaScript is now much larger than Java, so the trademark for JS should at least revert to the public.

• by jbverschoor on 9/16/24, 10:00 PM

  Well.. ecmascript got a lot of marketing value from JavaScript and thus Java. If it was called something else it would’ve never become so big

• by worik on 9/16/24, 7:33 PM

  I agree It is time to let JavaScript go

  I do not mean the trademark

• by jay-barronville on 9/16/24, 8:10 PM

  Oracle executives are scheduling a meeting right now just to read this letter together and laugh at it.

  All jokes aside though, they don’t care, and frankly speaking, despite how much sense it makes for them to release the trademark, they have no reason to care.

  To seriously move the needle on this issue, you need deep pockets and lawyers.

• by RadixDLT on 9/16/24, 11:48 PM

  javascript should be renamed to LavaScript

  sun microsystems - sun -> lava

  java volcano -> lava

• by pipeline_peak on 9/16/24, 8:51 PM

  >GraalVM is far from a canonical JavaScript implementation; engines like V8, JavaScriptCore, and SpiderMonkey hold that role.

  >you must dig into the documentation to find its support.

  Okay but it’s in the documentation which ruins your whole “abandonment” argument.

  Even still, they clearly have their own use of JavaScript, albeit not “canonical”, whatever the author meant by that bitter refutal.

• by __MatrixMan__ on 9/16/24, 6:21 PM

  Maybe it's time to stop caring about such things entirely.

• by criticalfault on 9/16/24, 5:20 PM

  > JavaScript is the world’s most popular programming language

  Is this really so?

  I have the feeling this is 'popular' because there are no alternatives. Web is popular, this is just an accompanying disaster.

  There was an argument about fragmentation so people didn't want more things as option. As an answer to that there were many (?) attempts to solve problems that come with JavaScript for years, anybody remember coffee script? The only one that worked is typescript. And typescript again transpiles to Javascript having worse performance and a bunch of limitations.

  The only alternative that I saw that makes sense is dart and people crucified google for considering to include it in chromium. It is really a shame that this didn't get accepted.

• by austin-cheney on 9/16/24, 4:20 PM

  JavaScript is just a name. The current language's official name, according to the specification defining that language, is ECMAScript. If the trademark is a problem then simply call it by a different name.