If there's one thing we know about Big Red, it's being entirely reasonable

This article makes for an interesting read. Here follow two early paragraphs for context:

Oracle controls the JavaScript trademark because in 2009 it acquired Sun Microsystems, which applied to trademark the name with the US Patent and Trademark Office back in 1995. The trademark was granted in 2000.

While the database giant does not use the name for any commercial products, its ownership of the trademark has led JavaScript-oriented organizations such as events biz JSConf to adopt branding that avoids the term. As the signatories to the letter observe, the world’s most popular programming language therefore can’t have a conference that mentions what it’s about.

Toward the end, the article mentions an initiative to legally pursue Oracle for trademark abandonment.

  • RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works
    942·
    2 months ago

    Just call it Ecmascript and be done with it. The name JavaScript was misleading from the beginning. Well, Ecma sounds like a skin disease but who cares.

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      20·
      2 months ago

      I could believe that a man could build a suit using arc energy technology. And I could believe that man could use that energy to kill aliens from outer space.

      But I could not believe that same man would ever use Oracle Cloud for his compute.

      Literally made Iron Man unwatchable.

      • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
        10·
        2 months ago

        I put the lawyers under Oracle since they are the physical manifestation of the corporation. Think of Oracle as “crack” and Oracle Sales as “crack dealers”. Each horrible in their own special way.

  • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
    35·
    2 months ago

    Cool! Oracle, a company famous for making good-will decisions, and open to being “urged” into doing the right thing. 🙄

    I suppose the open letter is a nice gesture, and I hope that the petition to cancel the trademark succeeds.

    • Zink@programming.dev
      3·
      2 months ago

      Sun Solaris was my first *nix, and I have very strong memories of hanging out in the cluster of Sun machines as well as running a remote x window session from whatever overlocked Celeron win2k machine I had in my dorm at the time.

  • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
    192·
    2 months ago

    If it’s such a problem, maybe we just collectively move on to ES or TypeScript nomenclature?

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
      24·
      2 months ago

      Typescript and JavaScript are different languages and the distinction is important, especially because the two are used in conjunction with each other.

      • Venat0r@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        Yeah but why would you ever use javascript instead of typescript.

        Don’t answer that. 😂

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          For an application? Never. I’d still use it for something very small like a build script where the hassle of separate compile and run stages makes the whole thing a hassle to use. That might change now, though, since I think Node has gained the ability to execute Typescript directly.

          • bitwolf@lemmy.one
            1·
            2 months ago

            Been using vite for a while and haven’t had to think about it.

            Glad node is catching up. But it’d spare even more headaches if it natively supported ES6 modules

    • starshipwinepineapple@programming.dev
      10·
      2 months ago

      The article mentions that the letter indicated intent to petition with the USPTO to cancel the Javascript trademark due to abandonment. Hopefully that is successful since that seems to be the best outcome short of Oracle willingly forfeiting it.