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

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

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

And they'll hold on to that tightly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

> Sincerely,

> Ryan Dahl - creator of Node.js

> Brendan Eich - creator of JavaScript

> Michael Ficarra - editor of the JavaScript spec

> Rich Harris - creator of Svelte

> Isaac Z. Schlueter - creator of npm

> Feross Aboukhadijeh - CEO of Socket

> James M Snell - member of Node.js TSC

> Wes Bos - host of Syntax.fm

> Scott Tolinski - host of Syntax.fm

> and 191 more members of the JavaScript community

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

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

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

I do not mean the trademark

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

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

sun microsystems - sun -> lava

java volcano -> lava

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

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

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

Is this really so?

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

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

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

One of those situations where the law can be on your side but the real problem is if you can afford the legal battle.

Some countries, the trademarks are market sector specific, but in other places cover all use cases for the name/mark.

It is highly recommended to trademark commercial products/names in each country of import. Otherwise your company could end up getting sued/imports-seized by an opportunistic a*hole that does nothing except sneak copyright/trademark rights.

Oracle is smart, and will sit on the IP like any business person should.

Most people that complain about trademarks/copyright have never been ripped off for a few hundred thousand by import/customs rules, or had counterfeit products show up for warranty repairs/returns.

IP is messy for sure, but it is better to negotiate from a position of legal power asymmetry when dealing with unreasonable individuals. Some people are crazy... had a few cons harassing one of the engineers a long time back, and needed legal to politely "ask" them to find another hobby. =3

That's why we need to file a petition with the US Patent and Trademark office.

I think it's pretty clear that JavaScript is the most popular one. And yes, it's popular because in it's space it's without alternatives. But so was C for many environments. We can judge if that's fair or unfair, but it does not change the situation we have.

[1] https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2024/1

[2] https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

I do not think Dart was much of an improvement

When the tooling improves WASM is

Popular, but terrible.