In all seriousness, let's just rename it "WebScript". WebAssembly, WebGPU, WebRTC, WebWorkers. It fits. And it seems like there's no active trademark for it too (although I admittedly did not do a super sophisticated search).
The “Java” prefix still confuses new users, not to mention "bizdev" people, and probably leads to legal issues beyond just the trademark. "JavaScript" has always sucked as a name, we're just used to it now. Why are we fighting so hard for it? Let's just take this as an opportunity to name it something that actually makes sense. It will maybe be sort of annoying for a few years, but I'm certain one day we'll look back and not believe we used to call it "JAVA Script".
Oracle, to my knowledge, does not profit at all off of the JavaScript name or brand. I don't see the purpose of defending this lawsuit. They have an opportunity to create some goodwill here, hold a press release, and say "We're gifting the JavaScript trademark to the developer community!" But instead they're defending something that they literally do not profit off of. It's absurd.
> They have an opportunity to create some goodwill here
According to Bryan Cantrill, you don't need to be open minded about Oracle. It's a waste of the openness of your mind. He says what you think of Oracle is even truer than you think it is. He believes there has been no entity in human history with less complexity and nuance to it than Oracle.
Bryan warns, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn. You stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- the lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle."
This is so true. And in my experience Oracle's main business seems to be getting companies to sign complicated contracts, waiting a year or two, and then suing them for some infraction so that they can extort another contract from them. I haven't met an Oracle product yet that can't be done better by either free software or a less litigious company.
I personally have come to the conclusion that behind every major open-source or free software success story, there is a completely dysfunctional market. Without this, it would be impossible to find enough people willing to say, “Fuck that shit, we're going to recode this ourselves.”
The fact that there are so many people motivated to code alternatives to Oracle products says a lot about Oracle's business practices.
The only good SQL tooling I am aware of, really good with compilers, debuggers, IDEs, is MS SQL Server.
Then stuff like distributed transactions, raw disk access for databases, among other niceties that people reaching to Postgres or MySQL probably never heard of, but many Fortune 500 enjoy, even if one for checking bullet points on RFPs.
Postgres comes second, after getting all puzzle pieces together, some of them also commercial.
We moved from mssql on Azure to Oracle. What should do instead, if Azure is a hard constraint?
Postgres, for example, or MySQL.
Broadcom has entered the chat.
It's wild that cease and desists and audit notices are becoming common ways to punish someone for just... not renewing your contract.
Former Twitter has been suing its customers if they don’t spend enough money on ads on the platform.
Tech companies and oligarchs are incredibly entitled.
This is hyperbole to the extreme. I have nothing what so ever to do with oracle
There is nothing I take more glee in than listening to bcantrill talk negatively of Oracle. Whenever Oracle comes up in one of his talks or a podcast, I know I'm in for a treat.
This is one of my all-time favorite talks! So good. Thank you Bryan Cantrill!
GP is saying from a purely mechanical, non-human standpoint Oracle's actions don't make sense.
It doesn't "make sense" for a lawnmower to cut hands either, it isn't a meat grinder after all. However it is a blade attached to a motor and from a purely mechanical, non-human perspective it will cut whatever comes within reach.
Oracle defends their properties whether it makes sense or not. That is what the machine does.
They do, if the lawnmower believes "more trademarks good" (and which corporation doesn't?), and trademarks must be actively used and defended to be kept.
Like all machines in the real world, the Oracle machine intelligence is limited - it can't process every single thing to infinite detail. "More trademarks good" and "trademarks must be actively used and defended to be kept" are heuristics and explain this well if you tack on an "on average" to the former.
Blood pathogen then?
Hahahahaha
They could reverse 90% of their brand damage in one swing by simply updating CDDL to allow integrating ZFS with GPL, which also wouldn't cost them anything as far as I'm aware, but we're both making the mistake of anthropomorphizing the lawnmower.
Oracle's official position is that CDDL is GPL compatible and no changes are needed.
Ignoring how Sun/Oracle's shenanigans with ZFS don't nearly account for "90% of their brand damage"...
> simply updating CDDL to allow integrating ZFS with GPL
That can't be done at this point. Owing to a decision that arose right here from a discussion on HN, the ZFS maintainers adopted a policy in 2016 to opt out of the CDDL's built-in "any subsequent version" clause for new source files:
~/scratch/zfs$ grep --exclude-dir=.git -Ire "Common Development and Distribution License" -A 2 | grep -ie "\(Version 1\.0 only\|\<only\>.*\<version\>\)" | wc -l
821
> They could reverse 90% of their brand damage
Their stock is 50% higher than it was a year ago.
Not quite sure this is doing them damage.
Making a concession when they have not been forced to might indicate weakness to some. In that sense showing a speck of humanity might actually harm their stock.
Thank for describing so eloquently this phenomenon, which IMHO is the root cause of the dysfunction endemic to big companies.
Microsoft’s “core DNA” is still there firmly, though.
They successfully weaponized open source by giving something for free and clawing back step by step (i.e. closing open source VSCode plugins), and leaving parts which does drowns competitors most effectively open.
Also they act like their open source code is “Free”. They firmly control it, yet act like they don’t.
Microsoft’s image didn’t improve a bit in my eyes.
Yeah, but Microsoft also did a two steps forward and three steps back there. Things like shoving product ads onto the lock screen and preinstalling Candy Crush Soda Saga cost them more goodwill than any developer-facing effort earned them.
Since Oracle is not in B2C, there is no brand damage in openly being a net-negative rent-seeker. Rent-seeking is what shareholders crave. It makes line go up, it has electrolytes.
Oracle has demonstrated the long-term and their stock has never been higher. Their sales are finally heading higher again.. They're one of the oldest software companies and are approaching 50 years old. What is more long-term in their industry than what they have accomplished?
They're better positioned now than they have been at any other point in the past 10-15 years.
Maybe they'll invest some of the rent into monopoly strategies and micro-improvements that keep Oracle attractive for high-stakes customers.
I hope I'm wrong though.
> Their stock is 50% higher than it was a year ago.
Tesla stock is 63% higher than it was a year ago, does this prove that each and every decision their leadership made was helpful to the bottom line?
It demonstrates that things that should matter, don't always.
I’m fairly certain the people buying Oracle stock ar elopking for exactly the kind of company it actually is.
>by simply updating CDDL
How about a simpler solution, just relicense everything to BSD / MIT.
The version of ZFS that everybody (besides the dwindling number of Oracle Solaris customers) uses now, OpenZFS, has been maintained completely independently of Oracle since they shut down OpenSolaris in 2010. This means that Oracle relicensing ZFS wouldn't do anything to help with getting it integrated into the Linux kernel, since there's been hundreds of independent contributors to ZFS since then who all own their own copyrights. Because ZFS is licensed under the CDDL, which has an automatic upgrade clause, Oracle could simply copy/paste the GPLv2 license text and call it "CDDL v2" if they wanted to make ZFS able to be included in Linux.
Not so fast.
Swapping to an entirely new license rather than adding one sentence to the existing one is not simpler either in terms of linguistics or getting approval from their army of lawyers.
It's not any more difficult either. They would both require getting all past contributors to agree.
I think some projects have done that in the past, but probably none where a big company owns the copyright to most of the code.
Why would they do that instead of the status quo, which is a gift for their lawyers to open later?
I don't associate Oracle and good will, and I don't think they care.
> They could reverse 90% of their brand damage in one swing by simply updating CDDL to allow integrating ZFS with GPL
ZFS can be run under Linux - combining the Linux kernel with ZFS is a collective work (collection) of two independent works.
However, it is not legal to then redistribute this combination. Which essentially means linux distros cannot ship with OpenZFS: each user must combine the two on their own.
(This doesn’t necessarily stop people, but it is read by Debian as “illegal enough” to warrant a splash screen on installing OpenZFS that you’re losing the right to redistribute.)
Being out-of-tree means that kernel refactors break ZFS, and that it has a lot fewer hands and eyeballs available for the kinds of bugs that require internal design changes to fix (rather than paper over).
Asking for seperate install of a filesystem is a big deal. It severely limits how the filesystem can be used.
No, they could not. Anything Oracle does at this point will never undo the damage their brand has, or else you are a fool.
[dead]
Nowadays, it's a lawyer company - not a technology/software company. Their only reason for existence is to keep selling licenses for the things they own for as long as they still can, so it's pretty natural they're holding on to anything (regardless of actual value) they can.
It’s a huge company with different divisions.
Oracle is one of the leading researchers in JIT compilers, garbage collectors, and language interpreters.
I would never hire someone with Oracle on their resume. The complete lack of morals it takes to work there is immediately disqualifying.
Part of me thinks that's just the Oracle equivalent of janitorial and catering staff, the people you need to keep around to ensure the people creating the company profit, the sales people and lawyers, can work most efficiently.
Yeah unlike other companies who keep technical staff on rolls to wash their feet and drink that water. Because profiting from technical work is unthinkable in industry.
I honestly don’t see how those equate.
Back when Oracle acquired Sun they told us "Sun had more lawyers per capita than we"
Interpretation on the fact and metric and the need to tell I leave up to you
Confusing everyone about java license situation is another example.
I think lawnmower metaphor never was accurate or helped to get it.
Oracle is an alligator or a snake. A reptile. If you move, it will probably eat you alive. It wants to eat you, or part of you.
It also lives in the waterhole, hoarding an essential resource. Not guarding or developing it, just sitting there.
It is ancient and will never change.
It's not alligator's fault for being predator. It is it's nature
They have lawyers that need to justify their salary. Also why would they give up something for nothing. This is the “market forces” at work.
I think this is key. When you hire people to do work, they'll find stuff to do even if it isn't really necessary or a long term good for the company.
My favorite other example of this is when I see a UI redesign that didn't actually benefit anyone and was more a style change than anything, and sometimes actively makes usability worse (cough Liquid Glass cough) In those situations I always think "well, some designers on staff needed to justify their paychecks".
These are all the result of the principal agent problem
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/principal-agent-problem...
> But sometimes there just isn't enough work for these folks to do (even if they need to be "warm" and ready when important work comes along). And if there isn't enough work to do, these people will find work to do.
It is possible to find work in a different area at the company for such in-between times.
For example at the company where I work, a (very capable) secretary whose original role was not needed anymore, but for who there existed a very role in the future was for the in-between time assigned to assist some other department in their reporting duties to regulating authorities.
It's not even justify their salary. A lawyer's sole job is to advocate for the legal position of their client as zealously as possible. A really good chief counsel would go to the CEO and weigh up the merits of the marketing win of "losing" this case. A drone lawyer just files whatever is necessary (or even unnecessary) to fight the case even when it makes zero god damn sense. e.g. giving a person a 25 year prison sentence for stealing a slice of pizza.
> Also why would they give up something for nothing.
Because it provides zero value and costs something to keep.
They hired outside counsel to represent them in this matter.
Goodwill isn't "nothing", but good luck explaining that to a lawyer.
Lawnmowers are incapable of caring about goodwill.
Quoting Bryan Cantrill? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2302s
Worth starting at 34:05 if you haven't seen it before.
Everyone who passionately defends a big company’s honor online needs to watch and understand that bit! Companies are not humans with feelings and empathy. They’re all lawnmowers. That they happen to be made of people doesn’t change their nature.
I'm not here to troll on Bryan nor Oxide, but wouldn't your same "rule" apply to Oxide?
> They have an opportunity to create some goodwill here
This would be first event of that kind to my knowledge. I've been coding for 20 years and never heard anyone say anything good about Oracle other than their free hosting tier _is free_. Better late than never I guess!
The only logical reason I can think of to fight to keep the trademark is that they specifically don't want any goodwill, and that want to maintain their reputation as ruthless litigators.
This is the wrong way to look at it from a business perspective. They don’t directly profit off licensing or support or anything like that, but they gain free advertising.
They gain absolutely nothing by handing over the name and brand - in fact they lose valuable brand recognition.
Obviously most people in the industry hate them with a passion (see this thread as evidence), but many see the association as evidence that they might at least have some expertise with that product set. I certainly don’t agree with their position, but it makes sense commercially.
Brand recognition for what?
No one thinks of Oracle when they see JavaScript.
In fact for myself, today was the first day I knew Oracle have anything whatsoever to do with JavaScript.
Oracle purchased Sun, which purchased Netscape. I had to look it up.
Edit: more complete history https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44408760
How are they going to lose brand recognition, when a majority of people do not associate JavaScript with Oracle? The only language I associate with Oracle is Java.
Oracle is a law firm that sells IP. They'd rather control and strangle the name JavaScript than let people use it without their control.
Oracle is doing something petty and absurd? Are you sure?
The hell, you say!
"To shreds, you say?"
> Oracle, to my knowledge, does not profit at all off of the JavaScript name or brand.
At this time, but their ownership and past behavior indicates that if Deno or anyone else tries to have a paid offering, there’s a non-zero chance Oracle will come sniffing for low effort money.
Probably a reflexive action at this point. Ingrained into what's left of their soul I assume.
It literally wouldn't surprise me if when asked, the legal team simply responded "it's standing policy".
"soul"? Oracle never had one in the first place.
Isn't the entire reason because they funded JavaScript and in order to protect Java's trademark they maintain it just in case? I think that's the real simple answer. Feel free to educate me if someone knows different.
No need to “gift” it. It would be better if no one owned the trademark. Put it in the public domain.
I’m not sure if that’s even possible under US law though.
Don't anthropomorphise the lawnmower.
They profit through conflation with Java.
How is it that Oracle gets to claim this trademark at all? They never created it, Netscape did. Oracle bought Sun which could have challenged Netscape for naming JavaScript after Java, but I don't think they ever did.
Oracle is a lawyer company[0]. Trademarks and patents are lawyers' weapons. You don't donate nuclear warheads to your enemies.
[0] https://www.globalnerdy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/oracl... (can't find original XKCD, sorry)
"Corporate goodwill" is an oxymoron.
its a euphemism for "avoiding reputational damage"
Well you just used "Oracle" and "JavaScript" in the same sentence so it seems it's useful to them to reinforce their brand.
Whoever thinks it's a good idea to bet on the altruism of a giant faceless corporation is dumb.
"Oracle" and goodwill is not a thing.
Oracle has been not profiting at all but has also been pretty much neutral on the use of the Javascript trademark.
"Developer communities" tend to create issues out of thin air, and that I don't like.
In this case I'm siding with Oracle.
> In this case I'm siding with Oracle.
Only because you don't understand Trademarks. They are not copyrights.
Trademarks exists to protect consumers, so they don't mix together companies and products that have too similar name or branding. So somebody can't release a product called iPhona for $600 in the hopes that somebody will overlook the typo and order it instead of an iPhone for $600.
If a company is not offering a product based on a trademark, that trademark should actively be removed. Oracle is not using the JavaScript trademark.
Almost like they’re not very smart people!
I mean I get Oracle hate and stuff, but remember the great and lovely Sun Microsystems used all tricks in the bag against Microsoft with respect to Java late 90s/early 2000s.
So, is "X abuses IP law" hatred is out of principle or because folks seem to be in love with Sun and Google and hate Oracle and Microsoft.
Because Microsoft was trying to takeover and change Java, and Sun actually made Java. How is that in any way the same situation as this?
Specifically, this is why Internet Explorer had "JScript". Microsoft did bad things to Java and lost their trademark license.
lawyers need something to do.
There's plenty of useful to do. Too bad they don't get paid to do that.
Yeah, they could be suing an orphanage or enabling the development of strip-mines in virgin rainforest.
Honestly, oracle is a pretty effective containment vessel for fine legal minds.
I have a feeling that a lot of big corps somehow work as effective containment vessels for decent workforce this way. It feels like a conspiracy but it doesn't make sense as one to me.
Oracle and "goodwill" in the same sentence is laughable.
Thank you to everyone behind this effort. At some point, decades ago in the past, Oracle added value to the tech ecosystem. Now, they’re a giant rent-extracting behemoth. I hate the fact that we can’t have nice things in 2025 simply because Oracle owns the IP. Oracle is what happens when corporations become lazy and hand over the keys to some brand names just because “no one ever got fired for buying/hiring _____.” I hope those days are past us.
Sun Microsystems definitely added value, tons in fact.
Oracle's contributions are less clear-cut, particularly if you don't count all the acquired "achievements."
Sun did engineering. Oracle does business.
I’d be surprised if Oracle released the trademark without a fight to the end. They have a special way of decimating open source projects.
oracle does engineering just fine, and they are actually still around...so maybe Sun was doing it wrong
Quality of engineering and longevity of the company producing the engineered product have nothing to do with each other.
Evaluated by how useful they are to society at large, many businesses should not exist forever--or even for very long. Xerox PARC, Kodak, and Netscape are examples of companies (or, in PARC's case, a division of a company) that contributed significantly to their fields before becoming defunct. Those contributions aren't worsened or inferior, somehow, because the companies that engineered them are gone.
Whether or not a company is still in business only tells you whether a company is good at keeping itself alive. Over time, that quality is increasingly disconnected from whether a company produces valuable goods or services.
only if there is a 1-1 correspondence between engineering acumen and money-making acumen, which I'm sure you already know isn't the case.
That sort of loaned manpower isn't free, despite management's continued delusions that it is. Loaners have a cost, both up-front (onboarding, mentoring, reviews, etc) and on-going (lack of organic expertise in the new code remaining on the team, maintenance of suboptimal or inconsistent code, etc). But they're not the sorts of costs that show up well on balance sheets, so good luck convincing anyone that they exist.
Who is responsible for the java API updates?
And not a single company bothered to acquire Sun, after Gooogle torpedo it with Android (aka Google's J++ and .NET).
Had it not been for Oracle, Java would have died on version 6, and it remains to be seen what would have happened from anything else.
Damn I miss Sun Microsystems products.
But did Sun actually add anything in relation to JavaScript?
The name, it was originally going to be called Livescript.
Those days will probably never be behind us because incentive structures in companies make employees risk averse.
When has Oracle ever added value whatsoever to the tech ecosystem?
If it's an honest question and not just the beginning of a hate-fest, let's think...
Both Java the language and OpenJDK the main runtime & development kit have had much more money and manpower poured into them under Oracle than they ever had previously. Both continue to advance rapidly after almost dying pre-Oracle acquisition.
MySQL 8 (released in 2018) was a massive release that brought many long awaited features (like CTEs) to the database, although MySQL's development have stalled during the past few years.
Oracle employs several Linux kernel developers and is one of major contributors (especially to XFS and btrfs): https://lwn.net/Articles/1022414
Not top 3 or even top 10, but better than most companies out there.
That's all I can remember.
edit: after thinking about it for a couple more minutes, they're also the main developer of GraalVM — the only high quality FOSS AOT compiler for Java (also mentioned by a sibling comment), and are writing one of the major relatively lightweight modern alternatives to Spring (the other two being Micronaut and Quarkus): https://helidon.io
There's also VirtualBox (inherited from Sun). And probably some other things. Although from what I heard you risk being besieged by aggressive Oracle salespeople if they suspect you're using one of the proprietary "extension pack" features. This sort of thing is why I would think very hard before using anything from Oracle.
Made this mistake w VirtualBox once - never again. I ended up somehow running the proprietary version which “phoned home” and some 30 or 60 days later corporate got a call. When it comes to Oracle, I take Nancy Reagan’s advice [0].
LMS/GLAS
Regarding Java, also to note that alongside IBM, they were cooperating with Sun since the very early days from Java, including the Network Computer efforts, for Java based thin clients.
>although MySQL's development have stalled during the past few years.
9.0 is finally released and we are now at 9.3. While nothing big or exciting with every release but development is steady. MySQL 8.0 will reach EOL in April 2026 so every should move to 8.4 LTS soon(ish) and 9.7x should also be LTS by then. I know most on HN is about Postgres but modern MySQL is decent. I think a lot of people still have MySQL from 5.0 era. Which is also somewhat true with Java as well.
I think Oracle do contribute lot of open source code, they just dont get the credit or brag about it.
> MySQL 8 (released in 2018)
Many already moved to MariaDB, because development stalled after Oracle bought Sun (which bought MySQL).
I think that postgresql's popularity has also benefited quite a bit from Oracle's acquisition of MySQL
I wonder how much of that was due to cursed distro repositories.
I will probably never forget the rage I felt at discovering the reason my scripts broke between Debian versions was because "apt-get install mysql" started silently installing MariaDB instead, which was close but subtly different enough. (I am honestly surprised considering an Oracle trademark is involved, no lawsuits were filed over this.)
people just like hating on successful companies, a HN special.. I ignore most those types of posts on this site because they are without any merit
From 01979 until about 02000, Oracle's RDBMS software was probably the best in the world, and definitely better than the free-software alternatives like Postgres. (Remember that MariaDB, then named MySQL, didn't become free software until 02000 and didn't support transactions until even later.) For several years after that, it was still the best database for some purposes. And that's true even though the Bastard Database Operators From Hell were present from the very beginning.
SQL is kind of shitty, but the relational database model is so great that it makes up for it. And until the rise of entity component systems, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB, all the decent implementations were proprietary software. Separately, although SQL's implementation of transactions is even more broken than its implementation of the relational model, transactional concurrency is also great enough to make up for SQL, and, again, all the usable implementations used to be proprietary.
I don’t love Oracle, but GraalVM is pretty cool. That and the vanilla JVM keeps getting updates.
I think you underestimate the impact of their database on the world. They were a huge tech innovator in that part (and actually still are).
They've done a ton of stuff with Java, including open-sourcing it in its entirety.
Everyone uses “JavaScript” to describe a language.
Oracle is a parasite.
Honestly, I had no idea JavaScript was even a trademarked name. I've always just assumed it's the name of a programming language and had no idea it had anything to do with Oracle.
I guess I don't feel bad not knowing this though, as the language really does have nothing to do with the company it's insane that they even hold a trademark for it.
Aren’t there laws about this? Where “Kleenex” becomes so universally }}]%^* )!;&
Pretty sure that’s what the whole suit is about.
Animal Well has an item called "flying disc" or something since Frisbee is TM.
To google something has for decades for millenials meant search online in any way.
Trademark law is dumb and inconvenient. Only people owning trademarks disagree.
But so are many other laws. We all just have to follow them all anyway.
Trademark law is what allows me as a consumer to buy a Coke and know I’ll get a Coke.
I find that convenient, despite owning no trademarks.
The benefits are so easily taken for granted as just being normal parts of life.
Just like how we take for granted that you can count on your food label not lying to you and your food not having dangerous ingredients, with proper inspections and such.
If I want to, I can readily buy a cola from several other companies today, with trademark law as-is. I can get a Coke from only one.
Are you arguing that I’d be somehow better off if any company could sell me an “equivalent” Coke, Toyota Camry, or iPhone?
No.
You're probably thinking of Genericisation. This isn't a law in the sense you probably mean, there is no statute about it, no legislature wrote it, nobody signed anything. Instead Genericisation is a legal doctrine related to the core idea in trademark law that we can't have exclusive use of descriptive marks.
Suppose you make a Big Car and you try to trademark "Big Car" as your exclusive mark for this new product. That's just describing the car, it's generic so you can't do that, it's OK to trademark "Giganticar" or "Waterluvian Car" or something because people can describe what their similar product is with the words "big car" but if you were allowed to own "Big Car" they can't do that.
Genericisation says well, if your product is so successful that now everybody knows what a "Waterluvian" is, and most people shown a new big car from say, Ford, say "Waterluvian" so that even Ford's sales people struggle to teach the guys on the forecourt not to call this a "Waterluvian" - that's now a generic term, you can't stop Ford just saying they're making a Waterluvian.
Genericisation only applies for crazy famous stuff. Kleenex is an example because your mom knows what a kleenex is, the guy who mows your lawn knows, Elon Musk knows, everybody knows, that's actually famous. Javascript probably wouldn't meet that requirement. My mother does not know what Javascript is, my boss does, because he's a software engineer, and maybe the average numerate graduate knows, but I wouldn't bet a lot of money on it.
Dilution is a related idea, also for very famous things. Dilution says for these famous things it's not OK to use the famous mark for any other purpose even though it's not related. So Disney toilet paper isn't OK, Coca-Cola brand vibrators, not OK, and so on. Nobody thinks the vibrator is a beverage, but Coke is so famous that doesn't matter. That doesn't impact here either.
The amount of people that use JavaScript to refer to the Oracle-provided JavaScript is zero, the amount of people who can refer to the Oracle-provided JavaScript over the last 10+ years is zero. Because it isn't a thing. I'm pretty sure that is against trade mark regulations.
Is there a relative component to the evaluation of genericisation? eg., if only truck drivers know about the term Waterluvian, but the vast majority use it in the generic way, then it's generic? Because it would be a relevant update to that law, & apply here
Because there's not actual written legislation, you could try to make this argument in court, but, previously courts have stuck to the idea that they mean everybody so truck drivers wouldn't be enough. Maybe "Everybody in New York" cuts it in a New York court, certainly I'd expect that "Nigerians don't know this word" wouldn't count against you in any court in the United States of America - but the sort of relativity you're thinking of was definitely not on their mind.
If Oracle win we rename the language JS. JS stands for nothing.
We can just start calling it by its full Christian name, Eczemascript
How about OS, where the "S" now stands for "sucks", and the meaning of the "O" is left as an exercise for the reader.
This will cause confusion with OS for "Open Source".
Also "Operating System". This is a feature, not a bug.
I guees we can use a name from island near Java. BaliScript, MaduraScript, KarimunScript and so on.
Or JoeScript, substituting one slang term for “coffee” for another.
TypeScript is now called DecafScript.
DFCOCScript. "Dee-ef-coc-script" Damn fine cup of coffee Script
Rolls off the tongue
No, we rename Javascript to Typelessscript.
.Net compiles to it's IL and who writes raw JavaScript these days anyway, so just call it JSIL.
Typescript--
How about douche-named-Larry-script. Take a page out of Apple’s playbook when they used the code name Butthead Astronomer.
https://www.engadget.com/2014-02-26-when-carl-sagan-sued-app...
We renamed master to main for nonsense. Broke everything. Still, companies and people were proud of it (lol).
Why we do not just use EcmaScript from now on in conversations and as a trend so the issue is solved. A joke to me.
What did it break for you? It was a relatively straightforwardly renaming process.
I've discovered submodules and build pipelines broken due to a changed name within the last year. Doesn't help that some people are late to the party and still changing things now. But, hey, at least I've done my part against slavery /s
Names are a funny thing. When gay marriage was still disputed I argued for just dropping the word "marriage" from law. My country has had civil partnerships available to all since 2000, which is gay marriage in everything but name. A decade later and people were still fighting for the name. I don't get it but language is a powerful thing and means a lot to some people.
As for master->main, that was just fake activism by people desperately wanting to be a part of something but not prepared to put in any actual work to convince anyone of anything they don't already agree with. Convincing people to drop the name JavaScript would be difficult due to the attachment and perceived loss to an evil company.
The cartoon explaining Oracle's org structure feels appropriate:
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/code-review-on-pr...
Deno should start a campaign with the slogan "Did you know that JavaScript has nothing to do with Java? (except for court trials)"
I'd donate.
I don’t mean to be pedantic, but beyond the deliberate syntactic echoes, JavaScript and Java were the first two languages with (incompatible!) object-oriented data models enforced by the runtime to achieve widespread adoption with longevity (sorry, Smalltalk!)
Python was invented earlier, but didn’t see wide use until later.
And that they were both massively accelerated by the level of interest in the early WWW is undeniable. No other general purpose languages can say that except perhaps Perl, and it slowly burned out.
Well, the models were in so far compatible as that JavaScript could access them to some degree from applets. Which is why they picked the name ...
> Which is why they picked the name ...
Is that really true though? As I understood it JavaScript was mainly adopted because Java was popular at the time. JavaScript originally shipped as LiveScript, and they changed it to JavaScript later. Here is a nice quote on it from Brendan Eich:
“The name JavaScript was chosen when Java was hot, and we were doing LiveConnect to hook up JS to Java applets.”
Here is one from David Flanagan:
“JavaScript was originally developed under the name Mocha… It was renamed JavaScript in a co-marketing deal between Netscape and Sun Microsystems.”
We can also punish people who are historically connected to this trademark and supporting Oracle. Like in this case, Mozilla and Brave.
If they have less users due to Oracle, they will put pressure on Oracle to release the trademark.
Interesting point, but I'm not able to judge the trutfulness.
So the JVM has a runtime-enforced nominal type system (and object model) with classes.
But JS, to my knowledge, only has primitive types enforced at runtime, and no nomimal class system, unless you basically implement it yourself?
Uh, edit: maybe I get you now, it does have that in a way. But prototype identity and "instanceof" are rarely used in practise.
Maybe I'm missing your point here. Answering at late local time.
It would be so great to have a nominal type system in the browser though.
So many JS librarlies have their own version of it, and it causes insufferable headaches when combined with TypeScript.
Like, they use complicated hacks to make sure that their library objects are not structurall/duck typed.
classes != objects
Yes, the typing and semantic models are wildly different. The point is that they’re primitive in a way that the other widespread alternative, C++, did not inherit from its Cfront heritage.
> classes != objects
that's what I was aiming at, maybe poorly.
There's tons of libraries that use some kind of runtime-observable instance property as a tag, to mimic nominal typing in JS.
The same thing is also possible using prototype identity, if you either use the class keyword syntax sugar introduced with ES5 (?), or if you manually do OOP using prototypes. But the latter is very uncommon.
It seems to be more common to add a property like
$_$_$____superlib__$-inst_WALRUS
Oracle is the definition of legacy. If you’re still using them you’re behind in the market and behind your competitors.
Related: https://javascript.tm/
Hugged to death on my end
I propose we rename JavaScript to "UntypedScript".
Doesn't Oracle stand for "One Raging Asshole Called Larry Ellison"?
Can I invent a language called Larry Ellison Script and trademark it
IANAL. But yes I think we can.
Good luck with the cease and desist letters.
Oracle is the only company in history that spawned a huge consultants network just to "survive" their license audits.
Google results:
Oracle License Audit Survival Guide for CIOs
Handling Oracle’s “Friendly” License Reviews
How to Prepare for an Oracle License Audit
How to Prepare For and Navigate an Oracle License Audit
Top 7 Oracle Audit Triggers (And How to Avoid Them)
Top 5 Best Oracle License Consultant Firms
7 Questions to Ask When Engaging an Oracle Audit Defensemy guess is that they feel there is risk in releasing the javascript trademark to the java trademark.
This is one of the things that makes me believe that humanity has just about run it's course.
Nashorn (the JS engine in the JDK) was the only teeth Oracle had, but they removed it, so what can they truly say they own that supports the fact they're building JavaScript?
GraalJS?
This looks like a distraction from Deno company.
Everyone knows what powers companies like Oracle, so it isn't as if they would given up on this, unless told so by the courts.
Maybe Deno the company should focus on making their actual business case, why pay for Deno instead of using node?
It's a great move for the brand Deno. They will be seen as the saviour of javascript.
>why pay for Deno
Pay for Deno? I never had to do that, what am I doing wrong?
You're not using their SaaS platform, which like Vercel with Next.js, is what keeps development rolling in.
What many are doing wrong is not paying for our tools like in other professions, and then acting surprised when the authors decide to pivot for something else, when funding dries out.
All the power to you Ryan!
Looking at the reasoning[0]:
> To plead a claim of fraud, petitioner must plead that: (1) respondent made a false representation to the USPTO; (2) respondent had knowledge of the falsity of the representation; (3) the false representation was material to the continued registration of the mark, and (4) respondent made the representation with the intent to deceive the USPTO.
> A claim of fraud must set forth all elements of the claim with a heightened degree of particularity [...] Indeed, “the pleadings [must] contain explicit rather than implied expressions of the circumstances constituting the fraud.” In addition, intent to deceive the USPTO is a specific element of a fraud claim, and must be sufficiently pleaded
> Essentially, Petitioner’s theory of fraud is based on allegations that the specimen of use submitted with Respondent’s maintenance documents do not show use by the proper party. It is well-settled that the proper ground for cancellation is the underlying question of whether the mark was in use in commerce, not the adequacy of the specimens [...] the insufficiency of the specimens, per se, does not constitute grounds for cancellation; the proper ground for cancellation is that the term has not been used as a mark
To file for a mark or renewal of a mark and claim ownership of something you do not own is insane. It's not like this is a 5 second process or that there isn't a lot of money riding on this-- this sort of thing is super serious and incredibly important! You're telling me no one at Oracle or their counsel was able to catch this in review before filing? As far as I can tell, in the renewal for the mark[1], Node.js was the sole specimen provided as an example of mark use! Come on...
EDIT: Sorry, correction, they have three specimens attached to the renewal, two of which seem to be the same. Clearly an insurmountable amount of work and too complicated to validate.
[0]: https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835&pty=CAN&eno...
[1]: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn75026640&docI...
IANAL, but I don't think your analysis is quite correct.
I think the key is
> It is well-settled that the proper ground for cancellation is the underlying question of whether the mark was in use in commerce, not the adequacy of the specimens
If I understand correctly (and I very well might not), that means that it doesn't matter whether some of the provided specimens were fraudulent or not, in order to revoke the trademark the burden of proof is to show the entire trademark claim was fraudulent, and if there was no fraud, then the trademark wouldn't have been granted.
Deno might be able to make a stronger argument of fraud, if they could show without that specimen USPTO would have rejected the application, or that the other specimen was also invalid, but that would delay the proceedings and require more work for them.
oracle holding javascript just froze it ,no one else can touch it ,they not doing anything with it but that nothing is exactly what kept it stable without fights or rebrands or ai company trying to trademark over it. later then it can also open lane for anyone to grab and next holder might not be this quiet. oracle doing nothing ended up protecting it more imo
Maybe it’s time to revert to Javascript’s original name: LiveScript.
> a screenshot of the Node.js website to show use of the “JavaScript” trademark. As the creator of Node.js, I find that especially offensive.
There is some irony in that Ryan isn’t acknowledging Node.js own trademark in his post, given that he was the person who announced the Node.js trademark.
https://nodejs.org/en/blog/uncategorized/trademark
So he wants Node.js trademark to be acknowledged, but doesn’t acknowledge it himself.
Oracle wants the JavaScript trademark acknowledged, and he doesn’t want to acknowledge that either.
This all seems very silly to me.
"Don't knowledge it" because he did not put a stupid TM sign in every blog posts he writes mentioning Node.js is a stretch.
There’s no acknowledgment of Node.js trademark on Deno.com … and the landing page is largely about how much better Deno is over Node.js.
Of all places to put trademark acknowledgement, it’d be there - and it’s missing.
Ryan's post explaining the decision to trademark node seems pretty reasonable to me. Does Oracle have a similarly credible justification for maintaining the JavaScript trademark?
AFAIK Sun gave Netscape free use of the JavaScript Trademark purely to side with Netscape against Microsoft in the browser wars, language wars, etc. I would think there is still something related to the original agreement.
It looks like JScript is still trademarked by Microsoft, why not ask them to do whatever the community thinks is right for ECMAScript names and then we can all refer to the language a little faster?
I feel like misplaced criticism.
Javascript has become such a ubiquitous term that its copyright status is increasingly tenuous. Node.js by contrast has no such problem, yet. Most of the industry supports this initiative, and dumping on the people willing to invest the time and money to fix it once and for all, over seemingly irrelevant things feels petty.
Trademark is not copyright.
One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison
While JavaScript has obviously become generic, why do people actually care to make it official? Has anyone ever gotten in trouble for saying "JavaScript"?
Imagine toiling all those years to make J* products usable, only to have Larry Ellison bigfoot everything.
I might not be popular for this but JavaScript is indeed a trademark which Oracle rightfully owns these days. This is fair play.
However, I do believe the word has been diluted and genericized and hope the USPTO chooses to release it.
A good argument to avoid losing a trademark to genericization is to show that there is an actual generic term that overlaps with the trademark, but then the trademark is not the generic term itself.
Examples:
Nintendo → Video Game Console
Post-it → Sticky Note
Xerox → Photocopy
etc ...
In the case of JavaScript, there's no generic term to allude to; JavaScript is the generic term, which might weigh towards the argument of genericization.
> JavaScript is indeed a trademark which Oracle rightfully owns these days
Err, that's not a given by any stretch. This is exactly what the suit is trying to prove. They are not a rightful holder of the trademark. They've failed to show use in commerce, and one of their examples of use was someone else's.
But it is an Oracle trademark, [1].
And here's one (trivial, but valid) use of it [2].
I'm sure Ellison lawyer's can come up with thousands of examples of JavaScript being used within the context of Oracle's business activities.
The way to go is fight for genericization (or start calling it ECMAScript, lmao).
1: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75026640&caseSearchType=U...
2: https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/2...
That 2nd example is a pretty bad example of JavaScript being used as a Oracle trademark.
Id argue the opposite. The wording makes no reference to oracles ownership of the product or name that is JavaScript. And ECMA is reffered to as the "maker" of the standard.
If anything, this is an example by Oracle themselves using the trademark in a generic context.
Its like cocacola calling themselves "a producer of fanta" and referring to a the food and drug administration to define what that means.
I doubt the writer of that doc was aware that Oracle owns the JavaScript trademark.
Oracle develops, maintains, and sells 2 different JavaScript runtimes. They’re definitely using it.
So do many other entities.
Oracle does not control the specification of the language (ECMA does), nor does it own rights to the original implementation (I believe Mozilla does).
wow, they filed for it in 1995? that’s wayyy before Node.Js or Dahl came on the scene. Or before the language even mattered that much.
Again, that's the point of the suit. It likely does not.
These (along with Kleenex) are common examples of genericization, yet I assume through diligence on the part of those brands, I hear and see the actual generic terms used far more frequently. For example, I've never heard anyone under the age of 70 (by now) use "Nintendo" to mean any video game console. "Sticky note", "photocopy", and "tissue" are terms I personally hear used much more frequently than "Post-it", "Xerox", or "Kleenex", respectively.
But for "JavaScript"? What else is there? "JS"?
Edit: I guess there's "ECMAScript", but who actually says that (aside when they legally need to)?
I've only heard Xerox be used like that once in my life. I was so confused what a company that invented the mouse had to do with what the person was talking about.
Wouldn’t the generic term be ECMAscript? I realize that that is a stupid name that no one wants to use.
ughmmm.so squatting.
[flagged]
This seems like such a pain in the ass to fight. Why not just rename the language? Most people are done with js anyway and just use ts.
Btw, The language is called ECMAScript
Literally nobody, outside of formal documents and perhaps pedants, uses that catastrophe of a name.
no it's not, that's a bureaucratic hoop-jump
If you are gonna change the name to anything, change it to js. But also, don’t change the name of the language, especially not to ECMAScript.
It is already called ECMAScript; they do not need to change it. It is also called JavaScript. (I don't know if there is trademark issues with ECMA too though)
However, the name "JavaScript" (and "ECMAScript") is in use enough anyways (like is described in the article), so Oracle shouldn't properly restrict others to use it in this way.
Does everyone else pronounce that as "eczema script", too?
"EnemaScript"
I mean, I don't think of it as a rebuke of JavaScript. I've just found it to be the most natural pronunciation for that sequence of letters. I really can't read it any other way.
I'd like to believe that most people have switched over to TS but I wouldn't count on it until I've seen the numbers, which I am currently too lazy to look up.
"We're now firmly in the TypeScript era. 67% of respondents stated they write more TypeScript than JavaScript code – while the single largest group consisted of people who only write TypeScript."
Nice to hear, thanks.
>Everyone uses “JavaScript” to describe a language—not a brand.
It can be both.
>Everyone knows JavaScript isn’t an Oracle product
But older people should know that it was a Sun product and Oracle bought Sun.
Edit: Sun actually only licensed the name. But in the renewal it points to an Oracle product called Oracle JavaScript Extention Toolkit.
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn75026640&docI...
But it was never a Sun product? Java was a Sun product, giving JavaScript a name with "Java" in it was the mistake that created this whole mess.
Rename it GoScript this time around.
It was livescript originally.
Java is a Sun product, but Java has nothing to do with Javascript except a confusing name overlap.
Javascript was written at Netscape.
The JavaScript name came out of a cross-licensing deal between Netscape and Sun where Netscape would bundle a copy of the JVM with their browser. Sun needed a way to put the JVM on most Windows users' computers to get developers to write Java software instead of Windows software, and they knew Microsoft wouldn't ship a product that would threaten the Windows platform's domination, so they figured that bundling with Netscape was their next best option. If you read the initial JavaScript press release ( https://www.tech-insider.org/java/research/1995/1204.html ), it's mainly marketed as a way to write glue code to make it possible for Java applets (where the real application logic would go) to interact with an HTML page:
> With JavaScript, an HTML page might contain an intelligent form that performs loan payment or currency exchange calculations right on the client in response to user input. A multimedia weather forecast applet written in Java can be scripted by JavaScript to display appropriate images and sounds based on the current weather readings in a region. A server-side JavaScript script might pull data out of a relational database and format it in HTML on the fly. A page might contain JavaScript scripts that run on both the client and the server. On the server, the scripts might dynamically compose and format HTML content based on user preferences stored in a relational database, and on the client, the scripts would glue together an assortment of Java applets and HTML form elements into a live interactive user interface for specifying a net-wide search for information.
> Java programs and JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the range of live online applications that dynamically present information to and interact with users over enterprise networks or the Internet is virtually unlimited. Netscape will support Java and JavaScript in client and server products as well as programming tools and applications to make this vision a reality.
> "Programmers have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about Java because it was designed from the ground up for the Internet. JavaScript is a natural fit, since it's also designed for the Internet and Unicode-based worldwide use," said Bill Joy, co-founder and vice president of research at Sun. "JavaScript will be the most effective method to connect HTML-based content to Java applets."
This was all implemented, and Java applets had full interoperability with JavaScript. Applets could call JavaScript functions, and JavaScript functions could call applet methods. Of course over time people gave up on Java applets and JavaScript became a good enough language to write real application logic directly in it. It's true that JavaScript now has virtually nothing to do with Java, but that wasn't the case initially, and the name has at least some logic behind it.
Ah, great background.
One more tidbit I just learned: there was a Netscape/Sun deal around the name, so the registered trademark has some legal history. It's not that Sun (and then Oracle) just claimed rights to something Netscape made.
No. I was around then and nobody thought of JS as a Sun product.
I'm trying to imagine the alternative history where James Gosling was given several days to develop a workable in-browser scripting language instead of Brendan Eich.
Node is about to become irrelevant. As soon as Microsoft ships TypeScript 7.
Why will TypeScript 7 make Node.js irrelevant?
In TypeScript 7, the compiler will be written in Go instead of TS. But the compiler will still produce JS code as its output and so Node.js is still relevant for running that JS code.
Or is there something else about TypeScript 7 that will make Node.js irrelevant?
How does a 10x faster TS to JS compiler make a JS runtime irrelevant?
Typescript 7 is not a replacement for node, it is a language spec and compiler, but Bun _could_ be the preferred choice for dev using a Javascript runtime.
bun is not faster than node, why do people keep thinking this lmao. v8 runtime is like x4 more performant than spidermonkey which is what bun uses.
Can you elaborate? Are you conflating node and javascript?
You made a fool of yourself.