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 go to fund their product.
pjmlp 16 minutes ago [-]
It looks more like they aren't getting the adoption that they need, so they go after theater like this, instead of giving us reasons why we should talk IT into allowing Deno in our OS images instead of Node.js.
Who cares if it is JavaScript, ECMAScript, JScript, WhateverScript.
zenmac 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah I feel like Deno seems still ok for a VC backed company. They are bring values to the JS dev community, and all their code is open sourced.
Are there any down side to using deno instead of node now days?
9 hours ago [-]
catlover76 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
MangoToupe 7 hours ago [-]
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.
morvita 4 hours ago [-]
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.
evolve2k 42 minutes ago [-]
Seems a worthy community contribution on first glance.
Just to check on a maybe obvious question, Deno is not trademarked is it?
NoahZuniga 8 minutes ago [-]
Does it matter? When I say deno, you think of the software product deno, produced by deno. Just like when I say coca cola, you think of the specific drink produced by the coca cola company. What I say escalator, you don't think of that specific company's products, but of the staircase conveyor. When I say javascript, do you think of any oracle product? No! So why should users of javascript live in fear of a lawsuite from oracle?
2 hours ago [-]
ImPostingOnHN 7 hours ago [-]
> If you perform a public service, it's fair to ask the public for money.
I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too). Especially when you are far richer (like 100+ times richer) than the people you're asking for money.
As a volunteer organizer for a weekly meetup that helps local entrepreneurs, I and my team have never "asked the public for money". Occasionally we have private companies that like what we do and throw some money our way for coffee. It turns out that passion and effort from volunteers and attendees and other members of the startup community are the critical parts of the meetup, and money is not.
So, that gets me wondering what could be done with those $200k besides pay people to get agreement on one particular word being free-er to use. For example, that would fund coffee and breakfast for the meetup for hundreds of years, perhaps even forever. Or fund plenty of other charitable causes with a direct positive impact on people.
sokoloff 2 hours ago [-]
> I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too).
I don't think it's reversed.
I coach a high school robotics team (volunteer, unpaid) and last season I went into my pocket for an unknown amount of money, but was not less than $5K and probably closer to $7K.
I'm clearly going to do it anyway; is it wrong for me to go out and seek sponsorships for the team so I don't have to dig quite as deep into my own pocket?
I don't think it's even the tiniest bit wrong nor in any way less-than-charitable.
SilasX 6 hours ago [-]
>I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too). Especially when you are far richer (like 100+ times richer) than the people you're asking for money.
I get the where you're coming from, but it's this exact attitude that ends up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.
ImPostingOnHN 5 hours ago [-]
If the $200k were going towards such a geek, or towards maintaining code that everyone uses, that'd be better.
As it stands, the money is going to lawyers, who will argue over the right to utter the word "javascript" in a commercial context (rather than, say, "JS"). So zero coding or maintenance.
lenkite 4 hours ago [-]
Programming Geeks cannot argue in court. Only lawyers can. So the money is going to the right place ?
ImPostingOnHN 3 hours ago [-]
You're assuming that arguing in court over being allowed to use 1 specific word in a commercial context is a good thing to spend $200,000 on at all, which is quite an assumption, regardless of who does the arguing.
I agree with you that it'd be better if Deno took your suggestion, and spent the money on a Programming Geek, rather than being distracted from their core mission for trivial, semantic matters. The latter is how we actually end up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.
I mean, I'll be the first to admit that I've argued about a word on the internet before, but at no point did it ever cross my mind that I should spend $200,000 doing so.
freeopinion 2 hours ago [-]
You have just convinced me to stop using the word J8t. It is not worth even $1 to me to be able to use that word. If Oracle wants to claim ownership, that claim can just be added to the legacy of Oracle. It's a bit stupid to be legally forced to stop using the word, but such is the nature of any discussion involving Oracle.
How about Deno put up $10,000 to sponsor a renaming contest? In honor of Deno, I propose VajaScript.
err... Vajascript
BoredPositron 7 hours ago [-]
It's PR. First the petition and now this fundraiser. Sorry but it feels more like a stunt than anything sincere otherwise they would front the money. They certainly have the funds for it.
xmcp123 5 hours ago [-]
Getting into a legal battle with oracle would be an incredibly expensive PR effort, especially as they filed and started the process without donations.
$200k is absolutely not going to come close to covering their legal fees possibly in any scenario but definitely if Oracle tries to drag out the process.
4 hours ago [-]
4 hours ago [-]
glenstein 7 hours ago [-]
That feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face. You can be in favor insofar as it's a public service and otherwise disregard.
BoredPositron 7 hours ago [-]
Everyone in here jumping to the conclusion that if you say something against the PR shit deno has done. To instantly sucking off Oracle and burning JavaScript flags in the garden. They literally brought it on to themselves and now they want you to pay for it. It's "the last chance" because they made it the last chance. That should be thing discussed in here. A company abusing their reach (60k for the petition) pretending to be guarding the community (millions) while forcing it's hand and also extorting it for money.
azemetre 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah, it's hard for this to feel like a community endeavor when it's a single company deciding to act on behalf of the community while never taking input or building a consensus around the issue with said community.
Hard to not be cynical about the whole thing, especially when it's a private VC backed company doing this and not say the OpenJS Foundation.
4 hours ago [-]
jedisct1 7 hours ago [-]
This is a form of marketing.
Goronmon 4 hours ago [-]
This is a form of marketing.
As is the existence of Hacker News.
johnfn 3 hours ago [-]
You seem to be implying that it is bad because it is marketing, and marketing is bad. But not all forms of marketing are bad. This is a classic association fallacy[1]. In this case, Deno can both improve perception of their brand and reclaim "JavaScript" -- it's a win-win.
>But not all forms of marketing are bad. This is a classic association fallacy
This is the classic "I'd accused your argument of being a fallacy so you're wrong and I'm right fallacy".
Nah, all forms of marketing are bad.
ForHackernews 6 hours ago [-]
It's effective. I feel positively about anyone willing to take Oracle to court.
NickC25 3 hours ago [-]
I hope this is sarcasm.
Larry Ellison is now the wealthiest person on earth and Oracle is an incredibly litigious rent-seeking law firm masquerading as a tech company.
Good luck and godspeed to anyone with the balls to think that taking them on is a good idea.
bigstrat2003 2 hours ago [-]
I think you misread the comment you're replying to as "I think their chances are good", rather than "I think it speaks well of their character". The latter was how I read it, and I believe the intended meaning.
NickC25 2 hours ago [-]
Fair point - apologies for the confusion.
doctorpangloss 6 hours ago [-]
It’s a little late for hockey stick growth though, no?
r_lee 9 hours ago [-]
Imagine the kind of media attention / clout they'll get for "beating Oracle" etc.
They absolutely do get material gains from this, should they succeed.
It'd be a much more legitimate effort if they were just asking people to raise funds for e.g. OpenJS to file suit etc.
SOLAR_FIELDS 8 hours ago [-]
I want Deno to succeed. They already have enough challenges between bun and Node taking all of their good ideas and incorporating them. I want the ecosystem to have more options.
This is Oracle we are talking about here. I would cut off my nose to spite Oracle’s face if necessary, they are some of the worst corporate actors in the history of the world. And that is not an exaggeration.
chamomeal 8 hours ago [-]
I also desperately want deno to succeed cause it’s just the best way to work with typescript. I have a strong personal interest in working with deno instead of node in the future.
At my company a lot of internal stuff is built with deno. Nothing mission critical but lots of utilities and stuff. But new services are still node, which is basically fine cause all of the complex config is handled already. But all of that complexity still leaks through (whoops can’t use this package because jest can’t find it!)
petesergeant 3 hours ago [-]
> because jest
My life is much better for having switched to vitest
typpilol 1 hours ago [-]
Same. Vitest is beautiful
sarchertech 8 hours ago [-]
> they are some of the worst corporate actors in the history of the world. And that is not an exaggeration.
I think that’s an exaggeration. The bar is pretty high (low). The history of the world has The East India Company, The Dutch East India Company, other companies transporting and selling slaves, the various companies that helped carry out The Holocaust, companies directly involved in other genocides, companies directly benefiting from and helping to enforce apartheid, companies pushing opioids, cigarette companies, mining companies etc…
Imustaskforhelp 7 hours ago [-]
The nightmares of east india company can't be understated.
I can talk to even indian kids, Heck we learnt about east india company in 6th grade so like 10-11 years old & they can tell how they really really exploited india with their indigo plantations etc.
I have nothing against britishers but the fact that they kind of never really paid or literally anyone paid for the amount of exploitation that was carried is absolutely wild, and seem to glorify it from what I see is absolutely ridiculous.
Really shows you that the winners of wars write histories as I can't see how people just shrug off this as if eh yeah it happened ,when lets say the same couldn't be compared to lets say the nazi invasion of poland lets say y'know?
Just as how germany has almost learnt from its nazi history / remembering the pains to not do them again, yet from what I know, britain seems to have glorified it.
Literally millions died due to churchill in the bengal famine. Yet he's celebrated as a war hero which I can understand but why do I feel like critizing that millions of people died because of some guy who did wrong is gonna get me downvotes or get resentment, surely we can all agree that churchill was wrong in that context
I really feel as if the world is a large hypocritical machine.
homebrewer 6 hours ago [-]
Nobody forced them into this, they poked the bear thinking it will get them an easy win and good publicity, and are now slowly falling into the abyss.
You're wasting your money. I honestly can't believe the number of people here thinking this is anything but a marketing stunt gone too far. We just had a series of major packages being infected with malware, how about putting $200k towards solving that?
Now that, if successful, would bring real immense benefits to all JS users.
Fraaaank 8 hours ago [-]
Litigation is not just 'file and forget'. Deno, or any other organisation, needs to contribute in time and effort for several years. In my opinion, "media attention / clout" is a fair compensation.
nchmy 8 hours ago [-]
In other words, no one should ever do anything good for society, because then they might benefit from being viewed as a good person
ToucanLoucan 7 hours ago [-]
The people with the (specifically American subtype of) Libertarian brain worms cannot conceive of someone doing something good for someone else without having some type of ulterior motive, so they project that forward as suspicion onto anyone doing anything good without a clear gain to be had.
nchmy 7 hours ago [-]
Indeed. I once had a former friend say something to the effect of "I wish there were a candidate who had a healthy balance of libertarian values and compassion". I asked him how he reconciles those to diametrically-opposed concepts and he grumbled and we're no longer friends.
bigstrat2003 2 hours ago [-]
I somehow suspect that the reason you aren't friends any more is because you as much as said he lacks compassion. If I had a friend who said that about me, and then refused to apologize for insulting me in that way, I don't know if I would stay friends with them either. It's especially ironic that you are acting in a very uncompassionate way here, while accusing others of not having compassion.
sokoloff 2 hours ago [-]
Libertarian values are 0.0% in conflict with compassionate acts. They are in conflict with compelled compassionate acts.
gspencley 4 hours ago [-]
> Indeed. I once had a former friend say something to the effect of "I wish there were a candidate who had a healthy balance of libertarian values and compassion"
What a weird ad hominem.
Since you're clearly ignorant, and since "libertarian" can mean a whole bunch of things, I'm not replying for your benefit. I'm replying for others who might come across this.
I'm an Objectivist, meaning I subscribe to Ayn Rand's philosophy. I don't consider myself to be a "libertarian" because the objectivist world view is not anti-government like many libertarians are. The objectivist view of liberty presupposes that the element of force is removed from civil existence so that all interpersonal relations are consensual.
But objectivists are laissez-faire capitalists. As in, we would like to see a constitutional separation of economy and state just like, and for the exact same reasons, that there is a separation of church and state.
I once asked Leonard Peikoff about the topic of compassion, because it is a very common charge against Ayn Rand and objectivists that objectivism leaves no room for compassion. That Rand was this ruthless "fuck everyone but me" sense of selfish. When, in reality, that's a distortion and gross misrepresentation of objectivism. The context behind that question was that a family friend of ours had lost both her brother and her 12 year-old daughter in a car accident months after her losing her mother to cancer. I felt an insane amount of compassion towards this friend of ours and I wanted to unpack that through an objectivist lens.
You have to understand what objectivists mean by the word "selfish." Rand once asked a talk show host if he would object less to the word "self-esteem." Rand chose "selfish" as a refutation of the major religion-centric world philosophies that espouse altruism as a moral good. In the objectivist view, altruism is synonymous with suicide. With self-sacrifice. In a moral philophical sense, being "good" under an atruisitic moral framework means that anything you do in service of others is good, and anything you do in service of yourself is wrong. Which is why many here are critiquing Deno because they're like "If they benefit AT ALL this is not a moral good. They're assholes." See the problem?
An objectivist view of friendship and interpersonal relations is predicated on shared values, and the mutual exchange of values. I wouldn't want my wife to say "I love you because you are so awful." I want her to recognize my value and worth to her on both an emotional and practical level. I love her because of what she adds to my life, and I want that to be mutual. Happy wife, happy life. But more to the point: shared values bring people together because each party benefits greatly from that shared lived experience grounded on common values and interests.
As Rand once said, paraphrasing: it's not a sacrifice to use your life savings for your child's leukemia treatment. But it is a sacrifice to use your life savings for a complete stranger's leukemia treatment while you let your own child with cancer die.
Humans are complex and have their own individual opinions and beliefs. Not all altruists are going to say that it is morally good, in accordance with their personal values, to sacrifice their child for a stranger... but if you follow an altruistic framework to its logical conclusion, that's where you end up.
To bring this back to the topic of compassion, if you have a child (or even if you don't) and you value life, and you observe that there is an innocent person suffering who did nothing to bring that on themselves, there is a shared value there: life. This is why the car accident hit me so hard emotionally. I have two daughters, I have a brother, I have a mother. I value these people and how they make my life better. I can certainly empathize with others when those same values come under threat. And I want people that I love or care about to be happy. That's the root of compassion. There is no conflict or contradiction there.
ToucanLoucan 3 hours ago [-]
> What a weird ad hominem.
Not ad hominem. Not a personal attack, it's an attack on an ideology, and more to the point, this isn't a debate, it's a discussion between random people and fallacies are concepts used to explore the intellectual errors present in formal arguments, not conversational trap cards. You can't just say "Aha! A fallacy!" that's not a rebuttal, you have to go on to explain why it's fallacious thinking. But again, neither is appropriate outside a debate.
If you wanted to make it a debate, you could reckon with the assertion at play: that Libertarianism as described is incompatible with compassion, and make that argument.
> I'm an Objectivist,
Your defenses of Objectivism are at least better constructed, however you're hinging the lot of it on an extremely narrow definition of compassion where it only "counts" if it is rooted in personal benefit, the same claim that spawned the discussion you arrived in in the first place. However you don't explain why this is and in so not doing, omit that doing nice things for people is also done for solidarity, for moral or ethical duty, basic decency, or again, nothing more complicated than the release of dopamine in the brain. We're social animals; it feels good, physically, to help one another. This is wired in our brains and not really optional, so much so we also see it in our more ape-like cousins, like chimpanzees and bonobos. And Libertarians. Sorry couldn't resist.
In any case, people generally and in this thread particularly critique ideologies like Objectivism because like many hyper-individualist frameworks, it treats interconnectedness, cooperation and intimacy as suspect unless a transaction can be defined to explain it. Not simply because Rand said "fuck everyone" (although I would certainly make an argument on how the politics she and those like her have fucked everyone in the United States and Britain especially) but because the framework struggles to account for basic tenets of society like collective responsibility, systemic biases and injustices, or, again, the simple notion that doing things for your fellow man makes one feel good, even if that good feeling is the only gain you have.
And yeah, all of that said, it's fucking gross that people film TikToks of themselves giving food to the homeless. Shitheads are shitheads and they've been with us since our ancestors left the caves, and critique of them has followed. That doesn't however mean there aren't countless acts of genuine charity happening every day that go undocumented, because the vast majority of people are not those kinds of people. Nor does it detract from our existence as social animals who benefit one another all the time, through simple acts all the way up to moments of genuine heroism and care that is simply not explainable in the Randian model.
cindyllm 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
koakuma-chan 7 hours ago [-]
And why would anyone do something good for someone else without an ulterior motive? Do you think people donate to charity because they are good or because they want to seem good? I met people IRL who acted "nice" except they were also aware they were being perceived as "nice" and explicitly called themselves "nice," wouldn't you agree this is hypocritical?
nchmy 6 hours ago [-]
What an absolutely tragic worldview you have... There's no doubt that there are disingenuous people (let alone complete grifters). But the fact that you can't conceive of anyone doing anything good just for the sake of it - let alone making genuine self-sacrifices, which happens ALL the time - is utterly shameful.
Moreover, if you are properly-aligned in life, whats good for others/the world is ALSO good for you. Even those who make genuine self-sacrifices would say so - at the very least, NOT having done it would be the real, unbearable, sacrifice.
I really hope you'll reflect deeply on this, and perhaps that it even haunts you - even if just out of pure self-centeredness, since the only people who you would ever have in your life with a mentality like this would necessarily be completely self-centered as well.
koakuma-chan 6 hours ago [-]
I am only making conclusions based on what I see, and I comment hoping people can tell me how I am wrong. I am still trying to figure this out, but all evidence points to what I said.
People never "do good" "just for the sake of it" - there is always a reason, whether or not the person realizes it. The reason could be, e.g., as I said, the desire to seem good, some kind of religious belief, etc. Ultimately, it is never "just for the sake of it"
I am also disappointed, and I don't know what to do with this, but I am not willing to become some kind of ignorant, delusional lunatic.
nchmy 5 hours ago [-]
You're a very sad, very confused person. I genuinely mean this: seek help. Or at least a hug.
ToucanLoucan 5 hours ago [-]
> And why would anyone do something good for someone else without an ulterior motive?
It feels nice. You should try it sometime.
nchmy 5 hours ago [-]
YeAh bUt fe3lin g0od is n ulTerIor m0t!ve!! A st0!c s4g3 flz nutHing
koakuma-chan 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not going to argue that feeling good is an "ulterior" motive, but it can be a malicious one. People can convince themselves, with varying degree of consciousness, that what they are doing is good, and ignorantly feel good about doing that, whereas for other parties what the person did can be the opposite, bad.
danenania 5 hours ago [-]
Does it matter? If people are kind and generous for the sake of recognition, the positive effects of their actions are just as real.
Not to mention that wanting approval and recognition is not really “ulterior”. It’s a natural human desire. The people to watch out for are those who claim not to want it.
jamesnorden 8 hours ago [-]
The parent poster is just countering the argument that Deno gains nothing from this, no need to strawman.
Sammi 9 hours ago [-]
Sure they benefit, but so do a lot of other people. Sound fair to ask everyone else to pitch in. Deno have already bankrolled this themselves for a while.
jansan 8 hours ago [-]
Please do not accuse anyone of "hate" for having a different opinion and expressing it in a way that you do not like.
Btw, I donated.
heeton 7 hours ago [-]
To be that guy: you’re objecting to someone’s subjective phrasing while also using your own subjective phrasing.
Language is malleable and messy, and I find it doesn’t help discourse if you attack the surface reading of a comment. I don’t think OP is “accusing of hate”, I think they’re expressing surprise that such negative sentiments exist to a sensible issue. I agree, as do you it seems.
(And yes, in writing this I asked myself if I’m reacting to your terminology or the intent behind the words. I hope it’s the latter)
Imustaskforhelp 7 hours ago [-]
The sad reality that you had to tell your stance by saying that you donated in this context otherwise people would've considered you an (anti deno?) in this lawsuit...
I think our actions speak louder than words.
Yes, I think we shouldn't spread hate speech and everyone has their own biases.
We should all preferably write comments in good faith hoping to learn something new from the others point of view.
So this was a fresh breath of view as in that I feel like this might be the best way of not literally accusing others but at the same time, I feel like that there might be some malicious actors or people not acting in completely good faith that can be indirectly supported by not accusing anyone y'know?
If somebody is bringing their personal VC sucks vendetta (I hate VC but I mean I can stand behind donations if they are transparent etc.) into a discussion, its not entirely good faith and shouldn't be accused at a (somewhat?) rate.
I think that the situation imo is that deno might have some good people but it would still be better if it wasn't deno suing them but rather some other preferably non profit which we could donate to that can sue it instead.
Maybe (node?)
BolexNOLA 7 hours ago [-]
> If somebody is bringing their personal VC sucks vendetta
It’s very hard not to chuckle at their choice of website to express those views
AndrewKemendo 7 hours ago [-]
> So what if they are a VC backed company? If you perform a public service
VCs have no public service - it’s an oxymoron.
Hence the “hate” though I think cynicism is the more appropriate term
The reality of finance driven organizations is that no matter what, anything that looks like public good will eventually -if not immediately- be used to capture value on behalf of capital to control
1vuio0pswjnm7 5 hours ago [-]
"So what if they are a VC-backed company?"
Why do they need to ask for money from the public if they are VC-backed?
Assuming that the Deno Land Inc. company would benefit from protection from Oracle's trademark
As a member of the public I see no "material gains" from "freeing Javascript from Oracle"
But I may be biased. I do not use Javascript and avoid others' use of it as best I can. I use a different object-oriented, garbage-collected scripting language with C-like syntax that is faster than JS, and faster than Lua (not LuaJIT)
greymalik 4 hours ago [-]
Why are you being cryptic about it?
op7 9 hours ago [-]
They don't have the right to do this. Oracle safeguards the JavaScript trademark against abuse with it's powerful legal teams and has a track record of good stewardship. These guys want to hijack their property and let it loose to the wild west. Who knows what unethical actors will do with it..
nchmy 8 hours ago [-]
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?
nurettin 7 hours ago [-]
> 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.
mmcclure 4 hours ago [-]
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.
davorak 4 hours ago [-]
If they are not using the trademark for anything, at least by US law, I think they do not get to keep it. The point of trademarks is to promote the production of public good, and if they are not in use they are not producing public good, but will consume public resources, like people dealing with C&D letter or the current time and effort from the government on deno's filings.
simonh 9 hours ago [-]
Freedom is all very well until someone decides they are free to come and take your stuff, or lie about you, or pretend to be you.
suprfsat 8 hours ago [-]
For example, low effort trolling, or self-propagating supply chain attacks.
conartist6 9 hours ago [-]
Most people just call the language "JS" cause Oracle doesn't own that trademark. That's why you wouldn't be able to have a JavascriptConf but we do have JSConf. This is a long-winded way of saying that we already know what people would do with the freedom to speak the name of the language and it's nothing worth fearmongering over...
It's for the courts to determine who had what rights, but it's Oracle that is credibly accused of greatly exceeding the rights given them under the law
SignalM 8 hours ago [-]
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 typing up and putting on their website.
tonymet 4 hours ago [-]
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.
chamomeal 8 hours ago [-]
I know there are all kinds of lawyers and pro bono work and such. But $200k sounds like a tiny pittance in lawyer world
Wowfunhappy 3 hours ago [-]
But surely it counts for something than Deno has the facts on their side?
siva7 10 hours ago [-]
I can't be the only one who believes the name JavaScript should die in Peace. It was and still is the worst naming of any popular programming language in existence.
oersted 7 hours ago [-]
Apparently the codename for the prototype language was "Mocha", infinitely better! Even the release name "LiveScript" is much better.
They switched for cynical marketing reasons, riding the "Java" hype, and to flaunt their partnership with Sun. Well, it did make some kind of sense at the time when the scope was much smaller. They had this rough idea of an interpreted lightweight companion to Java, back when lots of backends where build with Java and it was meant to be the frontend counterpart for some limited interactivity in the client. But they never got it properly integrated and they diverged very early.
legobmw99 5 hours ago [-]
We should call it UnTypedScript
rs186 10 hours ago [-]
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.
stronglikedan 7 hours ago [-]
I think there's some bias at play here. I'd wager that most of management still thinks JavaScript and Java are the same thing, and can't understand why their new frontend hire doesn't know how to work on their Java backend.
Cheer2171 7 hours ago [-]
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 TS, but it is a nice side benefit.
NB: But I had an intern say to me one day "did you know TypeScript is just JavaScript with types and a linter?" And I just smiled.
creesch 4 minutes ago [-]
> I don't think they're teaching Java much in university or boot camps anymore so it doesn't matter much anyway
That might just be the bubble you are in. Java is still one of the biggest languages used in corporations across the globes for anything backend related. If it is because it is a modern COBOL or because it actually is a stable language with a solid ecosystem might be a matter of some debate.
In the circles I navigate it is still heavily featured in various bootcamps.
ddtaylor 5 hours ago [-]
> No, it still causes confusion from new programmers, HR, execs who thinks JavaScript === writing Java Scripts.
Anyone that stupid in 2025 is hopeless.
latexr 2 hours ago [-]
Intelligence has nothing to do with it. You can’t deduce JavaScript and Java aren’t related, you have to be told/read that.
4 hours ago [-]
StapleHorse 9 hours ago [-]
This give me the idea of creating a dontion site that allow the user to donate in favor of a cause, but also against.
Use only one variable that can go negative. The plaform keeps "only" the money on the losing side X2. For the lols.
In these days and age of hate and confrontation, whos knows it may work.
giveita 10 hours ago [-]
JS is better and you can make it a recurisve backronym. JS stands for: JS Script.
mrweasel 6 hours ago [-]
Probably to close to JScript, not sure if Microsoft cares enough to sue though.
tgv 5 hours ago [-]
I'm in favor of calling it ()=>{}, pronounced TLFKAJ (The Language Formerly Known As Javascript).
shireboy 9 hours ago [-]
Was thinking the same. Not only would shifting industry to ECMAScript or something else get around trademark nonsense, but now that I think about it I do hear non-techy manager types get confused to this day and call it Java. Also seems like time is right as less is done in plain JavaScript- it’s Typescript, React, framework du jour, WASM.
I guess the hard part is convincing an industry to use a different word.
snovymgodym 6 hours ago [-]
Yet somehow ECMAScript was a worse name.
neilv 6 hours ago [-]
I think of JavaScript as Eczema.
Akranazon 6 hours ago [-]
Honestly, the screw up was right there.
impostervt 9 hours ago [-]
Honestly think Go is worse. So hard to google anything about it.
ricardonunez 9 hours ago [-]
Add lang and that solves that issue. Although I agree that is a stupid name.
3oil3 8 hours ago [-]
You'r not the only one: Javascript makes me think of ads; Oracle of Symphony, some restaurant stuff I worked with; hard to describe the experience. Not very safe, designed so normal people are ultra dependent on paid-for support. etc But I'm not here to rant :)
I do find that request outrageous, the true objective hidden, and I still don't grasp what the fuss is about anyway; in what way does it matter does Oracle own the name?
Before being superseded by Python, wasn't JavaScript the world's most used language?
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Oracle fan-boy, but why?
And doesn't Oracle own Java as well? Sure, very different languages, but hard to say the same for the trademarked names, and Java is older.
How about taking energy to do something else, something positive.
'JS' as somone said earlier, is pretty cool.
NetMageSCW 3 hours ago [-]
I’m sure JS will Google well.
ramses0 9 hours ago [-]
All in favor of WebScript raise your hands! :-P
...I am 1000x more in favor of *.ws instead of "Michael Jackson" of *.mjs
no_wizard 7 hours ago [-]
I don’t know why they didn’t go with the more obvious esm since it’s ecmascript modules
morpheuskafka 3 hours ago [-]
Oracle has this trademark in numerous countries. Even if this USPTO proceeding cancels it in the US, someone will need to cancel it in every other country to be safe for using it for a global software project/company. Because they filed directly in each country, rather than using the Madrid/WIPO process, a US cancellation doesn't affect the others at all.
(Likewise, even if Oracle wins this, they could still have to spend to defend it in other countries or risk losing it there if challenged.)
thw_9a83c 5 hours ago [-]
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.
tengbretson 2 hours ago [-]
Aparently it is fine if you take an existing, trademarked language name and just add `Script` to the end of it.
Obviously we should just call it JavaScriptScript.
mattmaroon 3 hours ago [-]
It does seem that rebranding would just fix the problem. I don’t really understand why the name is worth fighting over.
serial_dev 2 hours ago [-]
Didn’t we try that experiment already with ECMAScript? Have you met anyone using it? Me neither.
I can’t wait for the “well actually” comments.
yesco 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not even sure how to correctly say ECMAScript out loud.
riazrizvi 4 hours ago [-]
Why not “JS”? Then we can all take sides in a religious war on whether it’s pronounced jay-ess, jayce, juss, or jess?
FearNotDaniel 2 hours ago [-]
It’s pronounced gay-ess. Just like GIF.
junga 53 minutes ago [-]
Sorry, this seriously is an honest question: Is there a typo in your post? Otherwise I must come to the conclusion that you suggest pronouncing JS as 'jiss'.
fair_enough 44 minutes ago [-]
Can't we all get along? "jizz" and "gay-ass" are both perfectly good.
hnlmorg 3 hours ago [-]
JS would be hard to trademark now because there’s so many other services using JS as part of their trademark. There’s also already quite a few companies who’ve already registered JS as a trademark.
You also couldn’t call it Jscript because Microsoft owns the trademark there.
EMCAScript is the most practical from a legal standpoint, but that name sucks badly.
moralestapia 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but that's what is needed.
An un-trademark-eable term.
RandallBrown 5 hours ago [-]
Kinda the other way around right? Java was a popular language at the time so Brendan Eich picked that as part of the name to make his new language more popular.
padjo 5 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure Brendan Eich had nothing to do with the name JavaScript. That was a name cooked up by the marketing department.
Maybe. However, he wouldn't have been allowed to choose the name "JavaScript" if Netscape and Sun hadn't been in a business partnership. So my point is still valid. It was just a random ride on the Java wave.
px43 4 hours ago [-]
How about EichScript, or ES for short :-D
zenmac 3 hours ago [-]
We can also call it ECMAScript. I always try to refer to it as ES instead of JS in professional coding context.
thw_9a83c 3 hours ago [-]
Apparently people don't like the name "ECMA" because it's too close to "Eczema" which is a nasty dry/itchy skin problem. And I agree, because I have it too.
hnlmorg 3 hours ago [-]
Ironically EczemaScript is still a better name than ECMAScript.
marcosdumay 1 hours ago [-]
It looks too much like "Acme" so it gets confused as a joke about cartoons. It looks too much like "acne", that is a too common skin problem, and it looks too much like "eczema" that is a rarer nasty-looking skin problem.
Whoever created that name should get a prize.
Anyway, the community not adopting that brand doesn't mean one can't rebrand JS.
wiseowise 60 minutes ago [-]
> And I agree, because I have it too.
Eczema or ECMaScript?
paxys 3 hours ago [-]
If there's a name even stupider than JavaScript it's ECMAScript.
FinnKuhn 3 hours ago [-]
I would like to be able to pronounce the name in a sensible quick fashion based on how it is written. ;)
For "WebScript" that works. Even just "JS" works. For "ECMAScript" not so much.
zenmac 2 hours ago [-]
ES would be fine. I guess it would conflict with with Spanish domains. But I'm sure we can just continue using .js in the files names... What is the Oracle gonna do? Sue every body who uses .js in the filename?
speedgoose 3 hours ago [-]
Why not HPVscript?
martin8412 2 hours ago [-]
CancerScript perhaps?
TZubiri 4 hours ago [-]
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
yk 4 hours ago [-]
Sounds really like a development environment problem, I mean if you can't handle that your language suddenly changes it's name in a not backward compatible fashion, how do you ever stand a chance to handle leap seconds correctly?
whatevaa 3 hours ago [-]
Is this sarcastic? Hard to tell.
Most code doesn't need to handle leap seconds at all.
thw_9a83c 4 hours ago [-]
So you think that Oracle must receive $200k, and that's the only way you can keep the legacy `.js` extension for your files.
ModernMech 2 hours ago [-]
"The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language." - Donald Knuth
Javascript was never a good name and if they weren't the defacto option to program the web, they would have never made it. I don't know why deno is so eager to get hold of the JS trademark when they have the perfect unencumbered name right there: denolang.
serial_dev 2 hours ago [-]
They don’t want to get hold of the trademark, they want to cancel it altogether. IMO it’s an important distinction
hu3 8 hours ago [-]
Oracle probably has a hundred lawyers that make more than $200k per year.
If Deno tries to half-ass this case, they will be doing the JavaScript community a disservice by creating court precedent for Oracle.
Finnucane 2 hours ago [-]
Oracle has a lot of money and lawyers, and how much of that have they used to actually protect the trademark? Do they sue people for infringement? Do they run ads in trade magazines saying, "hey please don't use our trademark generically"? How much money do they make from owning the trademark? Are they going to spend more than that to defend it?
nchmy 8 hours ago [-]
if they dont do this, there wont be an opportunity for another case..
hu3 7 hours ago [-]
Well that is an urgency that Deno folks created. So it seems the deed is done.
> After more than 27,000 people signed our open letter to Oracle about the “JavaScript” trademark, we filed a formal Cancellation Petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Ten months in, we’re finally reaching the crucial discovery phase. - Ryan Dahl
You can't make this up. If I was Larry Ellison I would be calling Deno folks personally to thank them.
barelysapient 7 hours ago [-]
Exactly this. Poor judgement on the part of Deno's leaders.
2 hours ago [-]
mcv 30 minutes ago [-]
Is this just about the name? I always thought naming it after a completely unrelated language was a stupid name. I would welcome making ECMAScript the official name. Or Webscript or something would make a lot of sense.
scandox 11 hours ago [-]
Oracle is like the magic word that makes me want to give money to causes. Which I rarely do or wish to do.
billpg 10 hours ago [-]
I kinda want Oracle to go further and insist that no-one can call it "JavaScript" any more. Let's all it "JS" and completely break from Java.
"What does JS stand for?" "It stands for itself."
schwartzworld 7 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of the urban legend that KFC couldn't legally call itself Kentucky Fried Chicken because they were using genetically modified hens that had no heads, hence the name change to just initials.
ecshafer 7 hours ago [-]
php stands for php hyper processing. js could stand for js script.
skylurk 9 hours ago [-]
"What doesn't it stand for? It stands for commitment. It stands for audacity. It stands for courage in the face of..."
hk1337 6 hours ago [-]
"What does JS stand for?" "Because it can't sit down! rimshot"
Keyframe 10 hours ago [-]
Let's all it "JS" and completely break from Java
or, you know, its alter ego ECMAScript? ES for short.
lagniappe 8 hours ago [-]
Nobody likes that name, stop
davey48016 7 hours ago [-]
I don't like it, but I dislike it less than I dislike the name JavaScript.
siva7 10 hours ago [-]
What's the point? Move on to Typescript and just call it TS. I never got the hang out of why people tend to add "-script" to the the name of a programming language like it's 1995.
throw567 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
throwingrocks 9 hours ago [-]
Surprised by the amount of mentions of ECMAScript here. It’s the worst possible name to me.
chamomeal 8 hours ago [-]
Sounds like eczema :(
Finnucane 2 hours ago [-]
Too bad there's no topical creme to get rid of it.
giancarlostoro 3 hours ago [-]
I vote we rename it MOCHAScript, which is my favorite coffee beverage.
ECMAScript comes from the spec for JavaScript, which makes sense.
throwmeaway222 4 hours ago [-]
It won't be called anything other than EcmaScript because there are already millions of references to that name.
ncr100 3 hours ago [-]
ECMAScript is the base language.
Javascript is that base + a layer on top .. 'navigator' object, etc.
maybewhenthesun 8 hours ago [-]
meh.
'Java' script was a ridiculous choice which has lead to much confusion.
For all I care it could be called mozillascript (would be historically more 'correct')
otoh anything Oracle wants is bad by default so...
balamatom 7 hours ago [-]
Petition to rename it to SillyScript
epolanski 7 hours ago [-]
Care to state why?
gtoast 3 hours ago [-]
Man, if only there were some extremely wealthy companies, like the wealthiest companies in the world, that had a vested interest in "freeing" Javascript that could donate a measley $200k...
ozgung 9 hours ago [-]
According to Wikipedia, JavaScript first appeared on December 4th, 1995, as a part of Netscape Navigator. The name was LiveScript in beta versions.
Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle) made the application for the trademark[1] on December 1st, 1995. The trademark was issued on May 6th, 1997.
I they had stuck with LiveScript, we'd be using LSON ("Ell-Son") as a data format.
mdaniel 6 hours ago [-]
Another bullet dodged, since saying Ellison 3 times in a row would cause a gaggle of lawyers to appear in the room
bambax 9 hours ago [-]
I have always wondered why Google didn't buy Sun? They propbably were at the time (and probably still are?) the biggest corporate users of both Java and JavaScript (which, of course, don't share anything beyond the name).
severino 7 hours ago [-]
Thank God they didn't. Java could be another abandoned Google project now. OTOH I don't think anybody can say anything bad about what Oracle did and is doing with Java.
NetMageSCW 3 hours ago [-]
Really? Try changing licensing terms every few years until their current commercial license requires paying for every employee whether they use Java or not.
The world would be a much better place if Google had googled Java twenty years ago.
wiseowise 58 minutes ago [-]
If you’re not using OpenJDK, you brought this on yourself.
mdaniel 6 hours ago [-]
> the biggest corporate users of both Java
I bet AWS would give them a good run for their money on that metric. I got the impression that Google was predominately a C++ shop, whereas the rumor mills tell me that most of the AWS control plane is in Java (I am pretty sure I've actually gotten a stack trace from an AWS API once or twice, but foolishly I didn't save it)
linuxftw 8 hours ago [-]
During that era, SPARC servers were the absolute premium units inside the datacenter. That aligned better with Oracle selling servers than Google, who doesn't sell servers, IMO.
2 hours ago [-]
maccard 10 hours ago [-]
Kinda hard to justify a gofundme for a vc backed company with 21m in a series A round...
serial_dev 1 hours ago [-]
200k? I’m not familiar with lawyer / paralegal salaries but I’m assuming it might pay for two paralegals for a year at most? 200k sounds like a very small war chest going up against Oracle. Or is this just to get some awareness?
paxys 3 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter how much money you raise. Oracle and Larry Ellison can outspend you 100000x, plus they have the ear of the USPTO and the rest of the US political establishment. This is a pointless fight.
baalimago 2 hours ago [-]
Add typescript support as default to browsers and drop "javascript" alltogether. Problem solved.
snovymgodym 6 hours ago [-]
This Bryan Cantrill quote is relevant any time Oracle comes up.
> If we don’t win discovery, Oracle locks in ownership of the word “JavaScript.” This is the decisive moment.
One more reason to move away from it and finally get some sanity back in webdev.
nchmy 8 hours ago [-]
What alternative do you propose to Javascript for interactive functionality on a web page?
maybewhenthesun 8 hours ago [-]
ecmascript?
nemomarx 8 hours ago [-]
we could always use wasm, right?
perlgeek 8 hours ago [-]
WASM doesn't have a DOM API, as far as I know.
nchmy 8 hours ago [-]
It does not. It interacts with browser APIs (not just dom) via JavaScript. And it needs to load a big binary first.
gamache 7 hours ago [-]
> finally get some sanity back in webdev
Like nested <table>s and 1x1 transparent spacer GIFs?
spankalee 3 hours ago [-]
I donated.
Oracle losing the trademark is just the right thing to happen. Even if Oracle has mythical undefeatable army of lawyers, it's worth it to me to see if there's a chance of common sense prevails for once.
sgammon 1 hours ago [-]
Who has Oracle sued, and what progress has it stopped, that Oracle owns the trademark to JS? Genuine question. Who actually cares?
jon-wood 10 hours ago [-]
It's certainly a bold move for a private company that wants to take a behemoth like Oracle to court over something that mostly benefits themselves to solicit $200K of donations from random people in order to so. I look forward to seeing how that plays out for them.
Sammi 9 hours ago [-]
> mostly benefits themselves
This is incorrect. All users of Javascript benefit.
eknkc 6 hours ago [-]
I personally am a user of JavaScript and don’t care what it is called. Call it FuckScript for what I care. How does this benefit anything other than Deno marketing?
sgammon 1 hours ago [-]
How
TiredOfLife 6 hours ago [-]
How?
jasinjames 8 hours ago [-]
> If there are leftover funds, we’ll donate them to the OpenJS to continue defending civil liberties in the digital space. None of the funds will go to Deno
lewisflude 4 hours ago [-]
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.
throwmeaway222 4 hours ago [-]
It won't be called anything other than EcmaScript because there are already millions of references to that name.
lewisflude 3 hours ago [-]
Such an awful name! From that perspective, a $200k legal battle makes total sense in comparison.
wiseowise 55 minutes ago [-]
Adopt TS as official browser language and kill JS. Since JS is valid TS, it will be literally a drop in replacement. Easy peasy.
cryptos 9 hours ago [-]
The simple solution is to write everything (for the browser) in TypeScript instead and treat JavaScript only as the compilation target noone actually talks about. And compiling to JavaScript might also become a thing of the past with Webassembly. So, I think we shouldn't care about JavaScript as a name.
Waterluvian 8 hours ago [-]
JavaScript is a nice compilation target because with a few extra flags, it’s actually very readable.
justincormack 9 hours ago [-]
I am fairly sure Microsoft owns the typescript trademark.
Yes you are right, apparently not TypeScript or TS.
hereme888 1 hours ago [-]
what if everyone agrees to call it JavaZcript, start an online campaign to inform everyone of the reason, and let Oracle fume in the madness of its greed?
wiseowise 57 minutes ago [-]
Script is not a problem. It’s “Java” that is trademarked.
loloquwowndueo 10 hours ago [-]
Can’t deno afford $200k without any help?
youtubeuser 9 hours ago [-]
They can. It'd be better if they asked other orgs and individuals to publicly support the task, even without funding it.
alexander2002 10 hours ago [-]
Its to raise awareness
loloquwowndueo 7 hours ago [-]
They could set a smaller target or ask for 1-dollar donations if they’re after maximum exposure. Here’s hoping they actually donate the entire raised amount to a non-profit, because yeah I don’t get the feeling they need the money at all.
lenkite 3 hours ago [-]
They would receive even more blow-back for $1 dollnations from HN here.
r_lee 9 hours ago [-]
advertise their business* and raise more VC money
r_lee 9 hours ago [-]
So donate money for Deno's marketing campaign?
Sammi 9 hours ago [-]
Deno have been bankrolling this case for a pretty long time already. Winning this case will benefit everybody who are benefited by Javascript. Sound fair to ask for everyone else to pitch in.
ecshafer 7 hours ago [-]
How? How does it benefit people. The name javascript being trademarked has never affected me once in my life. Especially since its technically Ecmascript and I am technically writing typescript nowadays.
darepublic 3 hours ago [-]
Willing to send something Denos way on this. Best of luck
3 hours ago [-]
sgammon 1 hours ago [-]
sequoia money angry that oracle money has trademark that nobody enforces or respects anyway
dijit 5 hours ago [-]
It’s not even a good name, let them have it and lets pick something better.
0x073 6 hours ago [-]
I don't understand it, nodejs use JavaScript on their website like many other e.g. vue , what's will 200k throwing away solves?
200k could do much more in the js ecosystem than just a word.
cornhole 1 hours ago [-]
save your money and pick a better name than javascript
linhns 4 hours ago [-]
Where does Node stands on this?
throwmeaway222 4 hours ago [-]
I remember a period where people just called it EcmaScript - so use that
phendrenad2 4 hours ago [-]
I've kind of become numb to the annoying JavaScript trademark situation. But yeah, it's bonkers. I agree, let's do something. So, if this fails, let's rename JavaScript to WebScript or BrowserScript or something. Nobody can say those aren't generic. And remember, the laughably unpronounceable, caps-lock-enabled, comedy gold that was "ECMAscript" almost caught on for a hot minute. (Can you believe it? We were this close to walking the halls of our big techs and startups and mumbling about "egg-muh-script".) The biggest hurdle will be getting Google to change the name. Google, famously, carefully avoids interacting with the public. I don't know what kind of infohazard they are afraid of contacting from us, but we have to break through that barrier somehow. We may have to resort to standing on the side of the road on the 101 with a sign that says "No more war! Save the dolphins! Accept the JavaScript(TM)-to-WebScript rename now!".
giveita 10 hours ago [-]
Er... or spend the let me check 6 months loaded cost of one of your devs and do it yourself.
s1mplicissimus 9 hours ago [-]
Seems this was downvoted. Well I for one agree with you.
Looks to me as if deno wants the public goodwill, but isn't willing to put their money where their mouth is. The term "brand awareness campaign" comes to mind.
codr7 3 hours ago [-]
I hereby cast my vote for shcript, short and sweet; think of it as a way of calling it what it is without using the S word.
sgammon 3 hours ago [-]
GraalJs is still right there
sgammon 2 hours ago [-]
didn't deno raise $25M
einpoklum 3 hours ago [-]
> Help Us Raise $200k to Free JavaScript from Oracle
Sure, just first please become a community-governed non-profit organization whose motivations and interests I am able to scrutinize - and I'll pitch in.
shmerl 2 hours ago [-]
JavaScript should have been LiveScript if I recall correctly. It was a mistake to put Java in its name, but now everyone has to deal with the fallout. Oracle is still wrong here, but original intent why it didn't end up being LiveScript was to ride on the popularity of Java.
pmarreck 4 hours ago [-]
Can we do ZFS next?
blindriver 9 hours ago [-]
Change it to EllisonScript
jgalt212 10 hours ago [-]
It's going to be hard to fight a company that has $600 billion in revenues coming their way--just from one customer!
sanex 8 hours ago [-]
Who definitely can pay it ;)
nchmy 8 hours ago [-]
The gofundme is now saying $55k target... Which is it?
Cyykratahk 8 hours ago [-]
There is some help text when clicking on the current goal amount:
> If an organiser turns on automated goal setting, GoFundMe adjusts their goal automatically based on the fundraiser’s characteristics and performance. You can see the goal history if GoFundMe has ever made automatic updates.
> To help the organiser reach their goal, we start them at a lower goal and adjust it as donations come in.
pyuser583 6 hours ago [-]
JavaScript isn't a generic term. There aren't lots of JavaScripts. Just the one.
If Oracle is going to lose the trademark, which it probably should, the reasoning could be better. How about the fact that Oracle doesn't really offer a service called JavaScript. Isn't abandonment a reason to lose trademark?
"Google" has become a generic term for search engine, like "Jello", "Kleenex", "Kool-Aid," etc. "JavaScript" isn't like that.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Can someone clear this for me?
firefoxd 5 hours ago [-]
This is a reminder that the power of Oracle is not in creating great software, it's in having iron clad lawyers and salespeople[0]. I want this to happen and will contribute, but I think there will be a rude awakening when the anvil falls on our heads.
WS is already taken by the WebSocket ws://… protocol.
ksherlock 7 hours ago [-]
Shower thought conspiracy theory: If the lawsuit looks like it might succeed, Oracle could make it disappear by ... buying Deno. Is their end goal to free javascript or is it to find an exit?
Imustaskforhelp 7 hours ago [-]
Firstly 200k isn't a lot of money against ORACLE which is a lawyer's level 100 and atleast millions of $
Secondly, it would be really shitty if they think that oracle could buy deno and we can just allow that and continue to cheer on for them.
It would be all hell breaks loose if oracle buys deno and this lawsuit disappears after raising money from public, the people donating would be furious and I feel like that there are already alternatives to deno (bun which is faster) which itself was a alternative to node.
People might as well fork it if comes under oracle possession. Idk
Tbh I agree that deno isn't the best for such lawsuit but rather something that can stand for free speech maybe fsf which deno could directly support and they can do a lawsuit instead?
whatamidoingyo 7 hours ago [-]
Oof, fair point. How many people would be able to refuse such an offer? Go live on an island and never have to work again, starting a new project if you get bored, or... keep working on Deno?
djdjsjejb 9 hours ago [-]
why not just ask larry ellison directly?
TheAceOfHearts 9 hours ago [-]
If you know his phone number maybe someone would volunteer to give him a call.
nurettin 9 hours ago [-]
I will volunteer for $200k
TZubiri 4 hours ago [-]
I had no idea there was a JavaScript trademark and that Oracle had it! How did they get there? If it were Java I get it, but JavaScript?
I also wonder what's the non-brand way to refer to it. JS? EcmaScript? The Browser Language Formerly Known as JavaScript?
ramesh31 9 hours ago [-]
This seems a bit like poking the bear. A loss here could give Oracle carte blanche to start going after people for using "JavaScript" anywhere.
nchmy 8 hours ago [-]
That's literally what is being fought for...
ramesh31 7 hours ago [-]
>That's literally what is being fought for...
But they don't really go after anyone for it right now, as it's a legal gray area that they haven't really cared to pursue. Forcing the issue will create a judgement (one way or the other) for them to know that it's enforceable if they win. I really hope Deno's lawyers know what they are doing because Oracle has literally unlimited money and legal resources for this kind of thing; it's basically their whole business model.
deadbabe 11 hours ago [-]
Should we truly donate or do we have no chance in hell? Seems like we are not in the right political climate to score a win here.
whizzter 11 hours ago [-]
Personally we should start using EcmaScript that is after all the actual language standard and stop letting Oracle let Java have a free popularity ride on EcmaScript's back.
sir_eliah 9 hours ago [-]
I think there are better ways to spend $200k than fight with deranged patent/trademark system.
NooneAtAll3 11 hours ago [-]
tbf, with how long these court cases go... result will be decided by next or even after-next political force
shim__ 7 hours ago [-]
I'd contribute to free us from JavaScript
6 hours ago [-]
ripped_britches 8 hours ago [-]
Can we just stop transpiling typescript and only run that instead?
In seriousness though, this does seem like a distraction from real work
notpushkin 6 hours ago [-]
People need distraction sometimes.
sremani 9 hours ago [-]
I have donated and was immensely disappointed the donations thus far are about $16K.
note to self: take HN righteous indignations less seriously.
op7 9 hours ago [-]
Sorry but I'm not going to sponsor you stealing a company's trademark.
whatamidoingyo 7 hours ago [-]
The company that took a screenshot of the nodejs website and used it as evidence for their claim of the trademark? The company that had absolutely nothing to do with nodejs? Ohh.
NetMageSCW 3 hours ago [-]
I didn’t know nodejs existed in 1995?
whatamidoingyo 2 hours ago [-]
In 2019, when Oracle renewed the "JavaScript" trademark with the USPTO, they were required to provide evidence of the trademark's "use in commerce." Oracle thought they'd just lazily screenshot the nodejs.org website and use that as part of their evidence, which is absurd.
If normal people did this, they'd probably be sitting in jail.
LucasMorins 7 hours ago [-]
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youtubeuser 9 hours ago [-]
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zrobotics 8 hours ago [-]
Well, it's oracle, so as far as I'm concerned anything that hurts them or their IP is a legitimate public service.
That said, it does seem more than a little cheeky for a VC backed company to open up a public gofundme for this.
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catchcatchcatch 5 hours ago [-]
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LucasMorins 7 hours ago [-]
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huflungdung 7 hours ago [-]
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ciaisdeepstate 4 hours ago [-]
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curtisszmania 8 hours ago [-]
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glimshe 10 hours ago [-]
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notapenny 8 hours ago [-]
Grow up.
And accept that both have merit. You may not like it but there's a reason languages, tools, companies, products, whatever become popular. And it isn't just because "people are idiots" or evil companies. Console wars are for teenagers.
mindwok 7 hours ago [-]
Nah. You can be an adult and realise that your feelings don’t mean the world owes you anything, and still think Oracle are a bad company with bad values.
glimshe 7 hours ago [-]
You lack imagination and ambition.
Of course they have merits. But, so what? I didn't dedicate my life to this field to build things that "have merit", but to build great things. And we have great things. It's just that neither Oracle nor JavaScript are among them.
notapenny 6 hours ago [-]
You have no idea whether or not I lack those. If you're going to make a blanket ad-hominem statement like that, at least don't follow it up by agreeing with my point.
Nobody is telling you to build things that just "have merit". Just because you don't like them, it doesn't mean that great things weren't built off the back of Oracle and in JavaScript.
If some Oracle product is the best pick for the task, or JavaScript is the best pick for the task... will you pick it? Or will you whine about what you dedicated your life to?
If you can't see that other people might feel different about this, or be able to build great products with these, maybe you're the one without the imagination and ambition...
fp64 9 hours ago [-]
I strongly disagree. There are things far, far worse than JavaScript. I would even go so far as calling it "quite decent". I like to use it for prototyping and scripting quite a bit, it can be rather efficient and the "standard library" is very decent in my eyes. It has some footguns, and certainly used to have a couple more (that are discouraged now, but still people complain and call it bad because technically, you can still use the bad parts that any linter refuses). I even really like the idea of protoype-oriented programming and find it a bit sad we lost this in favor of classes, but I guess this actually makes the language a bit easier. Disclaimer: I am not a webdev, and if I do webdev, I use TypeScript. Personally, I consider e.g. Python far worse.
donohoe 10 hours ago [-]
Learn ASP or VBA and embrace true suffering
CharlieDigital 10 hours ago [-]
ASP could be written in JScript and was the OG JavaScript SSR.
In some ways, easier to understand and better than anything we have now.
thomasjb 8 hours ago [-]
Do everything in serverside cgi programs, at least until WebAssembly disposes of the currently necessary JS wrappers to access the DOM.
giveita 9 hours ago [-]
Floss their teeth? Don't drink too much? Research before they vote?
re-thc 10 hours ago [-]
Go back to pen and paper.
ricardonunez 9 hours ago [-]
Working in my punch cards as we speak.
rs186 10 hours ago [-]
I mean, Fortran still exists.
xmcqdpt2 9 hours ago [-]
Fortran is pretty great:
* First-class tensor manipulations (like numpy but in the core language)
* Fast math with the right compiler
* Automatically sized multi dimensional arrays on the stack
* Zero cost C interop
* Minimal runtime, no GC, compiles to small programs
* Generics
* Coarray based parallelism in the core language
Sure it has issues but if you want to write fast numerical code and don’t want to bundle 2GB of pytorch or however big the Julia standard library is, or you want to make a small library with a C API, it’s a pretty great language. There are 50 year old libraries that still work perfectly (and much faster than they did then!) You won’t get that kind of longevity out of Rust ndarray.
pklausler 6 hours ago [-]
Having written one, I'd like to disagree with the "minimal runtime" point. Fortran's I/O system, intrinsic procedures, memory management, and derived types need a lot of code in the runtime support libraries.
acka 9 hours ago [-]
So does COBOL.
beanjuiceII 9 hours ago [-]
no thanks, ecmascript already is a fine name why don't we just start using it more since thats what it is
why deno so hung up on this? why not focus getting people to use deno instead?
SpaceL10n 9 hours ago [-]
"ecma" doesn't feel right coming out of my mouth or in my ears. Perhaps because it's sound isn't common in the English language? I'm actually struggling to find any other words right now that sounds similar to ecma.
But to answer your question, here we all are talking about Deno. Can't say if that was their plan all along or not, but it's working.
JSR_FDED 9 hours ago [-]
I know what you mean, sounds like AcneScript.
SpaceL10n 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah there you go my teenage angst resurfacing after all these years
kstrauser 8 hours ago [-]
EczemaScript, to me.
EcmaScript is high on the list of reasons you don’t let devs name products.
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 go to fund their product.
Who cares if it is JavaScript, ECMAScript, JScript, WhateverScript.
Are there any down side to using deno instead of node now days?
Just to check on a maybe obvious question, Deno is not trademarked is it?
I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too). Especially when you are far richer (like 100+ times richer) than the people you're asking for money.
As a volunteer organizer for a weekly meetup that helps local entrepreneurs, I and my team have never "asked the public for money". Occasionally we have private companies that like what we do and throw some money our way for coffee. It turns out that passion and effort from volunteers and attendees and other members of the startup community are the critical parts of the meetup, and money is not.
So, that gets me wondering what could be done with those $200k besides pay people to get agreement on one particular word being free-er to use. For example, that would fund coffee and breakfast for the meetup for hundreds of years, perhaps even forever. Or fund plenty of other charitable causes with a direct positive impact on people.
I don't think it's reversed.
I coach a high school robotics team (volunteer, unpaid) and last season I went into my pocket for an unknown amount of money, but was not less than $5K and probably closer to $7K.
I'm clearly going to do it anyway; is it wrong for me to go out and seek sponsorships for the team so I don't have to dig quite as deep into my own pocket?
I don't think it's even the tiniest bit wrong nor in any way less-than-charitable.
I get the where you're coming from, but it's this exact attitude that ends up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.
As it stands, the money is going to lawyers, who will argue over the right to utter the word "javascript" in a commercial context (rather than, say, "JS"). So zero coding or maintenance.
I agree with you that it'd be better if Deno took your suggestion, and spent the money on a Programming Geek, rather than being distracted from their core mission for trivial, semantic matters. The latter is how we actually end up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.
I mean, I'll be the first to admit that I've argued about a word on the internet before, but at no point did it ever cross my mind that I should spend $200,000 doing so.
How about Deno put up $10,000 to sponsor a renaming contest? In honor of Deno, I propose VajaScript.
err... Vajascript
$200k is absolutely not going to come close to covering their legal fees possibly in any scenario but definitely if Oracle tries to drag out the process.
Hard to not be cynical about the whole thing, especially when it's a private VC backed company doing this and not say the OpenJS Foundation.
As is the existence of Hacker News.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
This is the classic "I'd accused your argument of being a fallacy so you're wrong and I'm right fallacy".
Nah, all forms of marketing are bad.
Larry Ellison is now the wealthiest person on earth and Oracle is an incredibly litigious rent-seeking law firm masquerading as a tech company.
Good luck and godspeed to anyone with the balls to think that taking them on is a good idea.
They absolutely do get material gains from this, should they succeed.
It'd be a much more legitimate effort if they were just asking people to raise funds for e.g. OpenJS to file suit etc.
This is Oracle we are talking about here. I would cut off my nose to spite Oracle’s face if necessary, they are some of the worst corporate actors in the history of the world. And that is not an exaggeration.
At my company a lot of internal stuff is built with deno. Nothing mission critical but lots of utilities and stuff. But new services are still node, which is basically fine cause all of the complex config is handled already. But all of that complexity still leaks through (whoops can’t use this package because jest can’t find it!)
My life is much better for having switched to vitest
I think that’s an exaggeration. The bar is pretty high (low). The history of the world has The East India Company, The Dutch East India Company, other companies transporting and selling slaves, the various companies that helped carry out The Holocaust, companies directly involved in other genocides, companies directly benefiting from and helping to enforce apartheid, companies pushing opioids, cigarette companies, mining companies etc…
I can talk to even indian kids, Heck we learnt about east india company in 6th grade so like 10-11 years old & they can tell how they really really exploited india with their indigo plantations etc.
I have nothing against britishers but the fact that they kind of never really paid or literally anyone paid for the amount of exploitation that was carried is absolutely wild, and seem to glorify it from what I see is absolutely ridiculous.
Really shows you that the winners of wars write histories as I can't see how people just shrug off this as if eh yeah it happened ,when lets say the same couldn't be compared to lets say the nazi invasion of poland lets say y'know?
Just as how germany has almost learnt from its nazi history / remembering the pains to not do them again, yet from what I know, britain seems to have glorified it.
Literally millions died due to churchill in the bengal famine. Yet he's celebrated as a war hero which I can understand but why do I feel like critizing that millions of people died because of some guy who did wrong is gonna get me downvotes or get resentment, surely we can all agree that churchill was wrong in that context
I really feel as if the world is a large hypocritical machine.
You're wasting your money. I honestly can't believe the number of people here thinking this is anything but a marketing stunt gone too far. We just had a series of major packages being infected with malware, how about putting $200k towards solving that?
Now that, if successful, would bring real immense benefits to all JS users.
What a weird ad hominem.
Since you're clearly ignorant, and since "libertarian" can mean a whole bunch of things, I'm not replying for your benefit. I'm replying for others who might come across this.
I'm an Objectivist, meaning I subscribe to Ayn Rand's philosophy. I don't consider myself to be a "libertarian" because the objectivist world view is not anti-government like many libertarians are. The objectivist view of liberty presupposes that the element of force is removed from civil existence so that all interpersonal relations are consensual.
But objectivists are laissez-faire capitalists. As in, we would like to see a constitutional separation of economy and state just like, and for the exact same reasons, that there is a separation of church and state.
I once asked Leonard Peikoff about the topic of compassion, because it is a very common charge against Ayn Rand and objectivists that objectivism leaves no room for compassion. That Rand was this ruthless "fuck everyone but me" sense of selfish. When, in reality, that's a distortion and gross misrepresentation of objectivism. The context behind that question was that a family friend of ours had lost both her brother and her 12 year-old daughter in a car accident months after her losing her mother to cancer. I felt an insane amount of compassion towards this friend of ours and I wanted to unpack that through an objectivist lens.
You have to understand what objectivists mean by the word "selfish." Rand once asked a talk show host if he would object less to the word "self-esteem." Rand chose "selfish" as a refutation of the major religion-centric world philosophies that espouse altruism as a moral good. In the objectivist view, altruism is synonymous with suicide. With self-sacrifice. In a moral philophical sense, being "good" under an atruisitic moral framework means that anything you do in service of others is good, and anything you do in service of yourself is wrong. Which is why many here are critiquing Deno because they're like "If they benefit AT ALL this is not a moral good. They're assholes." See the problem?
An objectivist view of friendship and interpersonal relations is predicated on shared values, and the mutual exchange of values. I wouldn't want my wife to say "I love you because you are so awful." I want her to recognize my value and worth to her on both an emotional and practical level. I love her because of what she adds to my life, and I want that to be mutual. Happy wife, happy life. But more to the point: shared values bring people together because each party benefits greatly from that shared lived experience grounded on common values and interests.
As Rand once said, paraphrasing: it's not a sacrifice to use your life savings for your child's leukemia treatment. But it is a sacrifice to use your life savings for a complete stranger's leukemia treatment while you let your own child with cancer die.
Humans are complex and have their own individual opinions and beliefs. Not all altruists are going to say that it is morally good, in accordance with their personal values, to sacrifice their child for a stranger... but if you follow an altruistic framework to its logical conclusion, that's where you end up.
To bring this back to the topic of compassion, if you have a child (or even if you don't) and you value life, and you observe that there is an innocent person suffering who did nothing to bring that on themselves, there is a shared value there: life. This is why the car accident hit me so hard emotionally. I have two daughters, I have a brother, I have a mother. I value these people and how they make my life better. I can certainly empathize with others when those same values come under threat. And I want people that I love or care about to be happy. That's the root of compassion. There is no conflict or contradiction there.
Not ad hominem. Not a personal attack, it's an attack on an ideology, and more to the point, this isn't a debate, it's a discussion between random people and fallacies are concepts used to explore the intellectual errors present in formal arguments, not conversational trap cards. You can't just say "Aha! A fallacy!" that's not a rebuttal, you have to go on to explain why it's fallacious thinking. But again, neither is appropriate outside a debate.
If you wanted to make it a debate, you could reckon with the assertion at play: that Libertarianism as described is incompatible with compassion, and make that argument.
> I'm an Objectivist,
Your defenses of Objectivism are at least better constructed, however you're hinging the lot of it on an extremely narrow definition of compassion where it only "counts" if it is rooted in personal benefit, the same claim that spawned the discussion you arrived in in the first place. However you don't explain why this is and in so not doing, omit that doing nice things for people is also done for solidarity, for moral or ethical duty, basic decency, or again, nothing more complicated than the release of dopamine in the brain. We're social animals; it feels good, physically, to help one another. This is wired in our brains and not really optional, so much so we also see it in our more ape-like cousins, like chimpanzees and bonobos. And Libertarians. Sorry couldn't resist.
In any case, people generally and in this thread particularly critique ideologies like Objectivism because like many hyper-individualist frameworks, it treats interconnectedness, cooperation and intimacy as suspect unless a transaction can be defined to explain it. Not simply because Rand said "fuck everyone" (although I would certainly make an argument on how the politics she and those like her have fucked everyone in the United States and Britain especially) but because the framework struggles to account for basic tenets of society like collective responsibility, systemic biases and injustices, or, again, the simple notion that doing things for your fellow man makes one feel good, even if that good feeling is the only gain you have.
And yeah, all of that said, it's fucking gross that people film TikToks of themselves giving food to the homeless. Shitheads are shitheads and they've been with us since our ancestors left the caves, and critique of them has followed. That doesn't however mean there aren't countless acts of genuine charity happening every day that go undocumented, because the vast majority of people are not those kinds of people. Nor does it detract from our existence as social animals who benefit one another all the time, through simple acts all the way up to moments of genuine heroism and care that is simply not explainable in the Randian model.
Moreover, if you are properly-aligned in life, whats good for others/the world is ALSO good for you. Even those who make genuine self-sacrifices would say so - at the very least, NOT having done it would be the real, unbearable, sacrifice.
I really hope you'll reflect deeply on this, and perhaps that it even haunts you - even if just out of pure self-centeredness, since the only people who you would ever have in your life with a mentality like this would necessarily be completely self-centered as well.
People never "do good" "just for the sake of it" - there is always a reason, whether or not the person realizes it. The reason could be, e.g., as I said, the desire to seem good, some kind of religious belief, etc. Ultimately, it is never "just for the sake of it"
I am also disappointed, and I don't know what to do with this, but I am not willing to become some kind of ignorant, delusional lunatic.
It feels nice. You should try it sometime.
Not to mention that wanting approval and recognition is not really “ulterior”. It’s a natural human desire. The people to watch out for are those who claim not to want it.
Btw, I donated.
Language is malleable and messy, and I find it doesn’t help discourse if you attack the surface reading of a comment. I don’t think OP is “accusing of hate”, I think they’re expressing surprise that such negative sentiments exist to a sensible issue. I agree, as do you it seems.
(And yes, in writing this I asked myself if I’m reacting to your terminology or the intent behind the words. I hope it’s the latter)
I think our actions speak louder than words.
Yes, I think we shouldn't spread hate speech and everyone has their own biases.
We should all preferably write comments in good faith hoping to learn something new from the others point of view.
So this was a fresh breath of view as in that I feel like this might be the best way of not literally accusing others but at the same time, I feel like that there might be some malicious actors or people not acting in completely good faith that can be indirectly supported by not accusing anyone y'know?
If somebody is bringing their personal VC sucks vendetta (I hate VC but I mean I can stand behind donations if they are transparent etc.) into a discussion, its not entirely good faith and shouldn't be accused at a (somewhat?) rate.
I think that the situation imo is that deno might have some good people but it would still be better if it wasn't deno suing them but rather some other preferably non profit which we could donate to that can sue it instead.
Maybe (node?)
It’s very hard not to chuckle at their choice of website to express those views
VCs have no public service - it’s an oxymoron.
Hence the “hate” though I think cynicism is the more appropriate term
The reality of finance driven organizations is that no matter what, anything that looks like public good will eventually -if not immediately- be used to capture value on behalf of capital to control
Why do they need to ask for money from the public if they are VC-backed?
Assuming that the Deno Land Inc. company would benefit from protection from Oracle's trademark
As a member of the public I see no "material gains" from "freeing Javascript from Oracle"
But I may be biased. I do not use Javascript and avoid others' use of it as best I can. I use a different object-oriented, garbage-collected scripting language with C-like syntax that is faster than JS, and faster than Lua (not LuaJIT)
In my Bizarro world, that is a good thing. Not doing things includes:
I would like it to remain as it is.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.
It's for the courts to determine who had what rights, but it's Oracle that is credibly accused of greatly exceeding the rights given them under the law
They switched for cynical marketing reasons, riding the "Java" hype, and to flaunt their partnership with Sun. Well, it did make some kind of sense at the time when the scope was much smaller. They had this rough idea of an interpreted lightweight companion to Java, back when lots of backends where build with Java and it was meant to be the frontend counterpart for some limited interactivity in the client. But they never got it properly integrated and they diverged very early.
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 TS, but it is a nice side benefit.
NB: But I had an intern say to me one day "did you know TypeScript is just JavaScript with types and a linter?" And I just smiled.
That might just be the bubble you are in. Java is still one of the biggest languages used in corporations across the globes for anything backend related. If it is because it is a modern COBOL or because it actually is a stable language with a solid ecosystem might be a matter of some debate.
In the circles I navigate it is still heavily featured in various bootcamps.
Anyone that stupid in 2025 is hopeless.
Use only one variable that can go negative. The plaform keeps "only" the money on the losing side X2. For the lols.
In these days and age of hate and confrontation, whos knows it may work.
I do find that request outrageous, the true objective hidden, and I still don't grasp what the fuss is about anyway; in what way does it matter does Oracle own the name? Before being superseded by Python, wasn't JavaScript the world's most used language? Don't get me wrong, I'm no Oracle fan-boy, but why? And doesn't Oracle own Java as well? Sure, very different languages, but hard to say the same for the trademarked names, and Java is older. How about taking energy to do something else, something positive. 'JS' as somone said earlier, is pretty cool.
...I am 1000x more in favor of *.ws instead of "Michael Jackson" of *.mjs
(Likewise, even if Oracle wins this, they could still have to spend to defend it in other countries or risk losing it there if challenged.)
Obviously we should just call it JavaScriptScript.
I can’t wait for the “well actually” comments.
You also couldn’t call it Jscript because Microsoft owns the trademark there.
EMCAScript is the most practical from a legal standpoint, but that name sucks badly.
An un-trademark-eable term.
Whoever created that name should get a prize.
Anyway, the community not adopting that brand doesn't mean one can't rebrand JS.
Eczema or ECMaScript?
For "WebScript" that works. Even just "JS" works. For "ECMAScript" not so much.
Most code doesn't need to handle leap seconds at all.
Javascript was never a good name and if they weren't the defacto option to program the web, they would have never made it. I don't know why deno is so eager to get hold of the JS trademark when they have the perfect unencumbered name right there: denolang.
If Deno tries to half-ass this case, they will be doing the JavaScript community a disservice by creating court precedent for Oracle.
> After more than 27,000 people signed our open letter to Oracle about the “JavaScript” trademark, we filed a formal Cancellation Petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Ten months in, we’re finally reaching the crucial discovery phase. - Ryan Dahl
You can't make this up. If I was Larry Ellison I would be calling Deno folks personally to thank them.
"What does JS stand for?" "It stands for itself."
or, you know, its alter ego ECMAScript? ES for short.
ECMAScript comes from the spec for JavaScript, which makes sense.
Javascript is that base + a layer on top .. 'navigator' object, etc.
'Java' script was a ridiculous choice which has lead to much confusion.
For all I care it could be called mozillascript (would be historically more 'correct')
otoh anything Oracle wants is bad by default so...
Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle) made the application for the trademark[1] on December 1st, 1995. The trademark was issued on May 6th, 1997.
[1]https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75026640&caseType=SERIAL_...
The world would be a much better place if Google had googled Java twenty years ago.
I bet AWS would give them a good run for their money on that metric. I got the impression that Google was predominately a C++ shop, whereas the rumor mills tell me that most of the AWS control plane is in Java (I am pretty sure I've actually gotten a stack trace from an AWS API once or twice, but foolishly I didn't save it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2305s
One more reason to move away from it and finally get some sanity back in webdev.
Like nested <table>s and 1x1 transparent spacer GIFs?
Oracle losing the trademark is just the right thing to happen. Even if Oracle has mythical undefeatable army of lawyers, it's worth it to me to see if there's a chance of common sense prevails for once.
This is incorrect. All users of Javascript benefit.
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 seems that MS has not trademarked TypeScript.
200k could do much more in the js ecosystem than just a word.
Looks to me as if deno wants the public goodwill, but isn't willing to put their money where their mouth is. The term "brand awareness campaign" comes to mind.
Sure, just first please become a community-governed non-profit organization whose motivations and interests I am able to scrutinize - and I'll pitch in.
> If an organiser turns on automated goal setting, GoFundMe adjusts their goal automatically based on the fundraiser’s characteristics and performance. You can see the goal history if GoFundMe has ever made automatic updates.
> To help the organiser reach their goal, we start them at a lower goal and adjust it as donations come in.
If Oracle is going to lose the trademark, which it probably should, the reasoning could be better. How about the fact that Oracle doesn't really offer a service called JavaScript. Isn't abandonment a reason to lose trademark?
"Google" has become a generic term for search engine, like "Jello", "Kleenex", "Kool-Aid," etc. "JavaScript" isn't like that.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Can someone clear this for me?
[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/why-use-oracle-db-today
Secondly, it would be really shitty if they think that oracle could buy deno and we can just allow that and continue to cheer on for them.
It would be all hell breaks loose if oracle buys deno and this lawsuit disappears after raising money from public, the people donating would be furious and I feel like that there are already alternatives to deno (bun which is faster) which itself was a alternative to node.
People might as well fork it if comes under oracle possession. Idk
Tbh I agree that deno isn't the best for such lawsuit but rather something that can stand for free speech maybe fsf which deno could directly support and they can do a lawsuit instead?
I also wonder what's the non-brand way to refer to it. JS? EcmaScript? The Browser Language Formerly Known as JavaScript?
But they don't really go after anyone for it right now, as it's a legal gray area that they haven't really cared to pursue. Forcing the issue will create a judgement (one way or the other) for them to know that it's enforceable if they win. I really hope Deno's lawyers know what they are doing because Oracle has literally unlimited money and legal resources for this kind of thing; it's basically their whole business model.
In seriousness though, this does seem like a distraction from real work
note to self: take HN righteous indignations less seriously.
If normal people did this, they'd probably be sitting in jail.
That said, it does seem more than a little cheeky for a VC backed company to open up a public gofundme for this.
And accept that both have merit. You may not like it but there's a reason languages, tools, companies, products, whatever become popular. And it isn't just because "people are idiots" or evil companies. Console wars are for teenagers.
Of course they have merits. But, so what? I didn't dedicate my life to this field to build things that "have merit", but to build great things. And we have great things. It's just that neither Oracle nor JavaScript are among them.
Nobody is telling you to build things that just "have merit". Just because you don't like them, it doesn't mean that great things weren't built off the back of Oracle and in JavaScript.
If some Oracle product is the best pick for the task, or JavaScript is the best pick for the task... will you pick it? Or will you whine about what you dedicated your life to?
If you can't see that other people might feel different about this, or be able to build great products with these, maybe you're the one without the imagination and ambition...
In some ways, easier to understand and better than anything we have now.
* First-class tensor manipulations (like numpy but in the core language)
* Fast math with the right compiler
* Automatically sized multi dimensional arrays on the stack
* Zero cost C interop
* Minimal runtime, no GC, compiles to small programs
* Generics
* Coarray based parallelism in the core language
Sure it has issues but if you want to write fast numerical code and don’t want to bundle 2GB of pytorch or however big the Julia standard library is, or you want to make a small library with a C API, it’s a pretty great language. There are 50 year old libraries that still work perfectly (and much faster than they did then!) You won’t get that kind of longevity out of Rust ndarray.
why deno so hung up on this? why not focus getting people to use deno instead?
But to answer your question, here we all are talking about Deno. Can't say if that was their plan all along or not, but it's working.
EcmaScript is high on the list of reasons you don’t let devs name products.