Help us raise $200k to free JavaScript from Oracle
deno.com
deno.com
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.
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
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)
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.
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.
Btw, I donated.
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
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)
Just to check on a maybe obvious question, Deno is not trademarked is it?
Also Deno is not claiming that trademarks are bad, they’re claiming that JavaScript is a commonly used term.
There's no hypocrisy.
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
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 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
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.
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.
Do not anthropenisize Larry Ellison.
$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.
> I can justify spending money on it because it does get Deno's name out there - blog posts posted to http://deno.com, etc - but without support it's pretty likely our legal bills will dwarf whatever that marketing is worth
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.
As is the existence of Hacker News.
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.
You seem to be saying that Deno reclaiming JavaScript is a bad thing? Why?
Only if we stretch the meaning of term beyond any reasonable bounds.
Google Summer of Code is bad?
Sponsoring the Linux Foundation is bad?
Releasing libraries as Open Source is bad?
Can you put any colour on your comments. They are difficult to understand.
Google Summer of Code is bad. I don't want a trillion dollar monopoly influencing FOSS.
Sponsoring the Linux Foundation can be bad, depending on who does it. Individual people with their donations?
Releasing libraries as Open Source is not bad. But if you release them as a corporate behemoth, who employs the people who work of them, and have them assign copyright claims for their contribitions to your corporate entity, it is worse than a community drive FOSS project.
The Linux foundation would not exist if only individuals donated to it.
Most OSS suffers from a lack of maintainers with time as they rarely are paid and can't make a living from working on it. Company backed OSS doesn't suffer from this. Most popular "community" projects are held together by an assortment of company backed developers.
Many things would not exist if they had to exist properly. Doesn't mean them existing improperly is good.
>Company backed OSS doesn't suffer from this.
No, but suffers from a way worse issue: corporate control.
Which is why community FOSS has been going downhill since circa 2005.
On the contrary: it barely exists today.
FOSS in (roughly speaking) 2005 and before was about a larger vision and a community. Not about mere access to code with specific licenses, or how many trillion dollar companies are depending on it.
>Communities rarely stay the same as they grow larger, but that doesn't mean they are worse. .
I'm not speaking about how communities in change in abstract (in which case doesn't mean necessarily for the worse). I'm speaking about what specific FOSS communities have had happened to them, and which I, and others, do find worse.
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)
Are there any down side to using deno instead of node now days?
I’m just curious since I’ve been doing deno for a few years now and haven’t missed node beyond cloning other programs.
Who cares if it is JavaScript, ECMAScript, JScript, WhateverScript.
How much will oracle pay to defend that $200k of effort? If the ratio is good enough it still sounds like a worthwhile cause, that is Oracle paying for, in my opinion, holding on to the javascript trademark unduly.
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.
Anyone that stupid in 2025 is hopeless.
I can’t believe I’m having to explain this, but you can show people a car and a carpet and they’ll understand how they differ. But if you show them two different programming languages, most people won’t be able to tell the difference. Just like most people see Chinese and Japanese, Swedish and Finnish, Portuguese and Spanish, and don’t know enough to distinguish one from the other, despite them having different names. They’re just similar-looking symbols organised in different ways.
Sure. Now I'm guilty of all the anti-intellectualism we are seeing, and the propagandists get to walk free, but ok.
and
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
HN Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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.
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 am 1000x more in favor of *.ws instead of "Michael Jackson" of *.mjs
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.
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.
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.
Thank you, Don for seeing and writing about this dimension.
Most code doesn't need to handle leap seconds at all.
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.
That’s how other languages (eg Perl and Python) manage their assets. And the ecosystem is better for it.
>Python
>And the ecosystem is better for it.
AHAHAHAHAHH
Either way, you come off as incredibly naïve.
I can’t wait for the “well actually” comments.
But really, what does it matter? Is Oracle suing people over the term JavaScript? Even if so, can’t they just use the correct term and the rest of us can call it JavaScript?
I guess I just really don’t understand why this is a good use of my donations rather than, say, feeding the hungry, and I don’t mean that to disparage any tech related not for profits or issues.
Whoever created that name should get a prize.
Anyway, the community not adopting that brand doesn't mean one can't rebrand JS.
...
Wait that's just normal JavaScript-
Eczema or ECMaScript?
For "WebScript" that works. Even just "JS" works. For "ECMAScript" not so much.
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.
Obviously we should just call it JavaScriptScript.
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.
'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...
Javascript is that base + a layer on top .. 'navigator' object, etc.
ECMAScript comes from the spec for JavaScript, which makes sense.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with sound of ecma script (maybe it's just a bit difficult on the tongue?). And not, it doesn't read like eczema, there's absolutely nothing related with that name other than the first two and last characters, reading one and the other they are completely different. It doesn't make sense to say they are similar. Stop with the astroturfing.
Everyone I see hating on ecma script simply say it's a bad name without argumenting or say it's similar to eczema, are we 12 now?
Potentially it could cause confusion between the spec and the language. But tbh I think the mistake was to create that differentiation in the first place. Let's just join these two together and there'll be no more head scratching of what is what.
(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.)
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)
Do you know how many other INFINITELY LESS EXPENSIVE forms of marketing there are? Of course it's marketing, Ryan Dahl even said openly "I can justify spending money on it because it does get Deno's name out there" on Twitter.
But yeah sure this is just an evil plot to get you to use a free MIT licensed runtime or a cloud hosting provider.
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?
This is incorrect. All users of Javascript benefit.
It seems that MS has not trademarked TypeScript.
Who cares about java?
Let's just move on. I think it would be a much peittier sight to behold seeing a whole community as a whole change the way they call their language instead of paying 100s of 1000s to some lawyers to fight over a name that's pretty bad in the first place (see the history behind the name, they just wanted to piggyback ride on java as a buzzword).
(please don't astroturf saying ecma script is a bad name, if you don't like it, argument why, don't be 12 saying it looks like eczema, it does not and never did)
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.
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.
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.
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.
I also wonder what's the non-brand way to refer to it. JS? EcmaScript? The Browser Language Formerly Known as JavaScript?
PHP needs to shed its image as a crufty language because modern PHP is written differently, I’m sure “the old way” of JS has many similar warts.
200k could do much more in the js ecosystem than just a word.
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?
> 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.
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?
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.
note to self: take HN righteous indignations less seriously.
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.
In seriousness though, this does seem like a distraction from real work
That said, it does seem more than a little cheeky for a VC backed company to open up a public gofundme for this.
If normal people did this, they'd probably be sitting in jail.