Help Us Raise $200k to Free Javascript From Oracle

I like it. Maybe some people don't like it.

I don't like it, but I dislike it less than I dislike the name JavaScript.

> No, it still causes confusion from new programmers, HR, execs who thinks JavaScript === writing Java Scripts.

Anyone that stupid in 2025 is hopeless.

> 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.

What are they teaching then? I mean, if you're doing a backend - and I don't mean tiny wrapper that wraps user input into queries, I mean the database engine itself - it's Java/Scala or C++ (hopefully not C)? Maybe Go? What else do they choose to teach for heavy industrial backend use?

Sure, some recruiters don't know the difference between Java and JavaScript and have no idea of what those job requirements mean. But it looks like a competency issue to me. Have you ever seen a Google opening that confuses Java and JavaScript?

They always care later when money is available and they need a new way to damage their brand.

SelfishScript. JavaScript credits Self as inspiration, but misses all the important things about Self.

JavaScript copied:

The name "Java", cynically chosen for marketing misdirection, not technical truth.

The word "prototype" from Self, but turned it into a quirky pseudo-class system. Instead of living objects delegating naturally, with multiple inheritance dynamically changeable at runtime, JavaScript glued on a weird constructor-function pattern that always confuses people, with constructors you have to call with new but can also uselessly call as normal functional foot-guns.

JavaScript missed:

The fluid, live object experience (JavaScript dev environments were never designed around exploration like Self’s Morphic).

The elegance of uniformity (JavaScript bolted on primitives, type coercions, and special cases everywhere).

The idea that the environment mattered as much as the language. Netscape didn’t ship with the kind of rich, reflective tools that made Self shine.

And most important of all: Self's simplicity! The original Self paper (Ungar & Smith, 1987, “Self: The Power of Simplicity”) was all about stripping away everything unnecessary until only a uniform, minimal object model remained. The title wasn’t ornamental, it was the thesis.

Simplicity. Uniformity. Minimal semantics. A clean consistent model you can hold in your head. Less semantic baggage frustrating JIT compiler optimization. Dynamic de-optimization (or pessimization as I like to call it).

Self proved that expressive power comes from radical simplicity.

JavaScript showed that market dominance comes from compromise (worse is better, the selfish gene).

JavaScript should be called SelfishScript because it claimed Self’s legacy but betrayed its central insight: that simplicity is not just aesthetic, it’s the whole design philosophy.

What about SloppyScript? It has a nice ring to it.

They would receive even more blow-back for $1 dollnations from HN here.

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.

Yeah there you go my teenage angst resurfacing after all these years

EczemaScript, to me.

EcmaScript is high on the list of reasons you don’t let devs name products.

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.

> 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.

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!)

> 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…

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.

Yeah, and I don't see how this necessarily helps Deno succeed? It may turn into a painful money sink.. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see why Deno should go and do this now that they should be focused on their product

> 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

Seems a worthy community contribution on first glance.

Just to check on a maybe obvious question, Deno is not trademarked is it?

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.

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.

The gotcha is them forcing the communities hand here without working with said community. It's despicable business practice and them admitting that it's mainly for show is even worse.

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.

>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.