They called it WinJS since the start—it seems this is the same library that's used to build Windows 8 metro apps in JS. They just officially open sourced it now (although you could always access the source, as it was just another dependency for your Visual Studio project) but it's been in use by people from Microsoft and otherwise for quite some time.

e; library to build windows apps = WinJS

Yeah, reminds me of those JScript windows shell things from ten years ago or so [0].

[0] - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb77...

The fact that it's branded with Windows makes me hesitant to use it for non-Microsoft environments.

Because its origin is as stupid as the origin of MtGox...

...and hopefully it will die the same kind of burning death.

Use HTML5. End of discussion. If Microsoft want to work hard to get their ideas into HTML5, then go for it. PLEASE. HTML5 could get better with their help.

Instead, we get this flaming pile.

Because it's full of WIN! (as opposed to fail?)

But really, I suspect the name is indeed intended to reflect Microsoft's flagship brand: Windows. They're proud of the brand and I'm sure there's no shortage of misunderstandings within Microsoft about how the public (mainly developers I believe) view the brand.