So Netscape got visibility for their language, Sun got the #1 browser to ship their language and they had leverage over Microsoft to extortionately license it for Internet Explorer. There were debates among the Java team about whether or not this was a "good" thing or not, I mean for Sun sure, but the confusion between what was "Java" was not. The politics won of course, and when they refused to let the standards organization use the name "JavaScript" the term ECMAScript was created.
So there's that. But how we got here isn't particularly germane to the argument that yes, we should all be able to call it the same thing.
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Edit: The above makes it sound like there was another scripting language:
> they had a small problem which was that this was kind of a competitor to their own scripting language.
What was your involvement with Netscape?
I was doing security, networking, crypto, and a bit of Solaris support along with others. Basically I was a 'systems' guy vs a 'language' guy like James, Arthur and Richard. We all participated in the integration with Navigator and had weekly meetings with Netscape while we were doing that.
They have just 50k USD out of 200k USD they are raising. (No idea if that's appropriate; from the outside, it seems like a lot of money, but also they are fighting Oracle which has unlimited money, so, yeah)
For some reason it's not linked in the page itself.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-challenge-oracles-javascr...
If possible, I would like to see the good guys in these cases go down fighting, and try to delay proceedings and waste as much money of their well-funded opponents as possible.
Probably if we were in the early 2000s this could have been a battle worth fighting. But considering we're in 2025 and probably more people are aware of JavaScript than Java at this point, even when you're deep in enterprise-land, I'm not sure it'd be less confusing.
Anyways, you're about two decades too late to this discussion :/
All the same, I probably get as many calls from recruiters to fill Java positions as I do JS positions. I've never used the former, and explaining it is always awkward!
Invoking Applet Methods From JavaScript Code - https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/in...
and
Invoking JavaScript Code From an Applet - https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/in...
Aside from the "Java is cool, name everything Java" in the early days - there was scripting between the browser and the applet using a language named JavaScript.
There are more important battles to fight.
Is it? My experience in the past decade is that there are more memes about people who confuse the 2 than people that confuse the 2.
Put another way, I'm fine with the TS syntax (and use TS because there aren't other choices), but the TS semantics aren't a good long-term solution.
> 1995 - Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed JavaScript. Later still, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript.
> With JavaScript, an HTML page might contain an intelligent form that performs loan payment or currency exchange calculations right on the client in response to user input. A multimedia weather forecast applet written in Java can be scripted by JavaScript to display appropriate images and sounds based on the current weather readings in a region. A server-side JavaScript script might pull data out of a relational database and format it in HTML on the fly. A page might contain JavaScript scripts that run on both the client and the server. On the server, the scripts might dynamically compose and format HTML content based on user preferences stored in a relational database, and on the client, the scripts would glue together an assortment of Java applets and HTML form elements into a live interactive user interface for specifying a net-wide search for information.
> "Programmers have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about Java because it was designed from the ground up for the Internet. JavaScript is a natural fit, since it's also designed for the Internet and Unicode-based worldwide use," said Bill Joy, co-founder and vice president of research at Sun. "JavaScript will be the most effective method to connect HTML-based content to Java applets."
This was all actually implemented. JavaScript functions could call Java applet methods and vice versa (see https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/deplo... ). Of course over time everyone abandoned applets because of all the security problems, and JavaScript became a good enough language to write application logic directly in it. Still, there's more meaning behind the name than it just being a cynical marketing move.
"Now" makes it sound like this is a recent acquisition of the JavaScript trademark. Oracle obtained it in 2009 as a result of the Sun purchase and if I remember correctly, Sun initially was issued the trademark back in the 90s sometimes.
Unrelated but, the JavaScript capitalization is so odd
We all know this.
> Oracle has no business claiming javascript as a trademark.
You think so. That's okay. But ultimately it is up to a judge to decide. Right?
I agree with the EcmaScript. Just ditch the stupid name. Get all the petition signers to agree an move on. Fuck Oracle. Fuck JavaScript (it's nothing like Java anyway).
In terms of standard, the specs already use "ECMAScript" and don't even mention JavaScript (https://github.com/tc39/ecma262/), although TC39 website does use it frequently. I guess they could officially recommend people stop using "JavaScript", but I doubt they care.
Otherwise, the petitioner Deno here is only a small part of the ecosystem and barely controls anything (and really nobody other than TC39 controls anything, which is good). They (or anyone else) can't just shout "stop saying JavaScript!" and expect people to follow.
Not to mention JavaScript is a simple, easy to pronounce word compared to ECMAScript despite the baggage, which is probably why they chose it in the first place.
Let's say the "JavaScript" name is officially deprecated somehow. People will continue to use the name for as long as it exists.
So Deno's petition tackles these problems, addresses the root cause and appears to be legally viable. That is the "right thing to do" here. Avoiding the name does not solve the problem. It never does.
In this case, it's Oracle's circus and we are the monkeys.
One possibility is thus just make some vocalic derivation, which align with well known spontaneous evolution of languages like ablaut[1]. Following that, and keeping the dance connotation, jive[2] is an option. Or closer on phonetic distance to java (/ˈd͡ʒɑː.və/), there is jovial (/ˈd͡ʒəʊ.vɪ.əl/ or /ˈd͡ʒoʊ.vɪ.əl/ or /ˈd͡ʒoʊ.vəl/)[3].
Might our jovial·script enjoy our life.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_ablaut
I see that there's something called that related to javascript already, but like -- very similar spelling, ".js" still works, we lose the Java confusion etc etc.
Or go back to calling it “LiveScript”
Just go with the flow - call it js.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
Take it to Twitter
Maybe it should just be pronounced eck-ma-script so it's got the same number of syllables as ja-va-script.
Because in practice, isn't this a bit like "Kleenex" - where everyone knows you mean "tissue" (EMCAScript).
Oracle is an incredibly litigious company. Their awful reputation in this respect means that the JS ecosystem can never be sure they won't swoop in and attempt to demand rent someday. This is made worse by the army of lawyers they employ; even if they're completely in the wrong, whatever project they go after probably won't be able to afford a defense.
That is why on one level I am surprised by the petition. They are talking to a supercharged litigation monster and are asking it "Dear Oracle, ... We urge you to release the mark into the public domain". You know what a litigation happy behemoth does in that case? It goes asks some AI to write a "Javascript: as She Is Spoke" junk book on Amazon just so they can hang on to the trademark. Before they didn't care but now that someone pointed it out, they'll go out of their way to assert their usage of it.
On the other hand, maybe someone there cares about their image and would be happy to improve it in the tech community's eyes...
Are there any examples of Oracle using their JavaScript trademark to sue anyone? If they did, that petition would have merit.
Unless Demo was, this feels like a marketing project. And it's working, too, so kudos.
This personal vendetta will likely end with the community unable to use the term JavaScript. Nobody should support this.
JavaScript is simply the better term, and marketing is everything. Reminds me of Java's POJOs, which was a very simple pattern that no one used, until someone gave them a fancy name.
ECMAScript is a horrible technical name. Might as well call it ACMEScript considering how willie e. coyote it feels to develop with it...
nothing against people with eczema of course
POTS = Plain Old Telephony System COTS = Commercial Off-The-Shelf
And it would feel just the same if it was named something else.
It's just a name, who gives a damn?
Not everybody knows. People who learn JavaScript don't know. In fact, they must learn this. And from my experience, most learning resources don't mention this, let alone teach this. It took me a really long time to understand what ECMAScript is and how it relates to JavaScript. And the effort I put in this understanding... I would have preferred to not having needed that.
So no, not everybody knows this.
Maybe. That's what the challenge intends to find out.
> Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle. — Brian Cantrill (https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m1s)
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2) TS becomes the official mainline, whoever doesn’t like types can just keep writing as they did before, because valid JS is valid TS
Problem solved, it’s not that difficult.
That would be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire. Not really better.
Non-exhaustive examples:
let foo = 2
foo = "foo" // TS disallows type change
let bar = {}
bar.baz = 2 // TS disallows adding propertyOne clear instance of FUD we do know about is the spec itself is not titled with the name of the language it specifies, which is then its own source of confusion for newcomers trying to learn the web platform, and makes it harder for old timers to explain things, and is generally annoying. Complexity. Confusion. Doubt. Inaction.
Removing legal FUD from the world is a good cause. I don’t mind if it also works as a good marketing play for Deno.
And the list of updates at the top says they've since filed a petition to dismiss the trademark, and Oracle has filed to dismiss the petition.
Edit: I read that date shockingly wrong, their response was February of 2025 so this is pretty old.
https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835&pty=CAN&eno...
monkey paw's finger starts curling
So, just go ahead and do it already. Your cute letter isn't going to change anything.
https://deno.com/blog/deno-v-oracle
This post is more than a year old.
Which you could make a strong case for also not being a democracy and rather a lawnmower... But I digress.
The irony is that 'freeing' JavaScript from Oracle's trademark might matter less than freeing ourselves from the framework churn. The platform itself is incredibly capable now.
And that would have been just fine.
The only case I can really see is someone going off and creating another language and then proceeding to call it, Javascript, Typscript or Go and then using the same logo but I feel at that point the developer community would be pretty effective in sorting that out without getting lawyers involved.
Even if that weren't the case though, I think part of the problem is that even if the trademarks literally never brings any value, it also potentially costs them nothing to retain them (unless someone tries to get it invalidated, at which point there's some cost to trying to defend it). Arguably the cost to establish in the trademark in the first place is also low enough that companies at that scale don't have much incentive notto establish them in the first piece; they already have lawyers and trademarking things isn't really out of the ordinary for them, so the marginal cost of having them file one more isn't very high.
It's worth considering whether the point you make about there not being much of a realistic concern around someone else attempting to copy the name is something that would be obvious to non-developers. Sometimes what might be obvious to a developer might not be obvious to a lawyer, and at the end of the day, the legal team is probably in charge of deciding things like this at these companies, so in the absence of pressure from someone who understands this point enough influence to make it happen (like maybe a C-level exec), it might not matter that the concern is realistic if it's theoretically plausible.
Oracle never apologised for this sudden hijack (of an executable that was trusted and used by millions of IT people) and malicious behavior (no prior information given by Oracle for this malpractice), if I recall right.
I am sure that disaster was a wake up call for many developers and corporations to move away from Java dependency.
At some point they will approach companies, likely tech companies that produce a product or offering that can't be described without using the word "JavaScript". They will offer a "convenient" licensing agreement of $50,000 per year for the use of their trademark.
They used this playbook with Java, an easier path because they had something more substantial than a trademark, but the approach will be the same. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/165kzxg/oraclejav...
As Oracle's debt problems mount, the company seems increasingly likely to weaponize this trademark against companies—despite otherwise showing little interest in the word. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/w...
Call the language JS, everyone already understands it, it's used on all the logos because it's short, we already another popular language with a very compact name (Go, which is harder to look up without mangling its name, and it's still doing fine).
don't get me started on typescript. Until recently I had to use its full name when googling something
Are you suggesting that Ryan Dahl's contribution has been less than satisfactory so far?
Bali is a lot more popular than Java
But just like with this JS trademark thing, it feels like they present themselves as spokespeople and spearhead for the whole JS community, which feels kind of misleading and grandiose.
The mentioned timeline site (link below) also has this issue: it slowly shifts focus from things like the first JS version, the creation of XMLHttpRequest, to later focusing on Deno milestones, as if these events would have had comparable impacts:
https://deno.com/blog/history-of-javascript
And that seems kind of dishonest and designed to nudge outsiders towards thinking Deno would be the default server runtime now, which doesn't seem to be true.
you will never ever be able to prove no intent to resume and as such the entire effort is beyond pointless
Or just JotScript.
But also, what are the consequences of Oracle having the trademark, why is this an issue?
Which is why WebAssembly is the right answer.
What does it matter to the user whether they get a runtime or a "compile time" error in their invisible devtools console? To them, the page simply doesn't work.
Static languages make sense when compilation happens at dev-time, where the actual devs can respond to the diagnostics. So it's far better to develop in a statically typed language, compile it ahead of time and ship that to the user. Which is exactly what people do now with wasm.
Which one?
It's caused way too much confusion over the years making people wrongly associate it with Java. My guess would be that associations exactly why Oracle doesn't want to give it up.
I would like to say go back to the original name of LiveScript from before Netscape tried to woo Sun, but the name LiveScript has been co-opted.
Something else with a J would probably be the least painful. JScript is permanently associated with Microsoft's terrible IE implementation. I offer up "JaScript" as it sounds largely like JavaScript but said with a drawl while retaining "JS".
Heck, I'll call it ECMAScript if that's what it takes. I'd rather not, but it's better than "JavaScript"
"JavaScript" tokenizes to 2 tokens (BPE). "ECMAScript" tokenizes to 3. No biggie here.
But the real cost isn't training—it's inference. Every time an LLM has to reconcile "ES6" with "JavaScript," explain the naming, or reason through "user said JavaScript but docs say ECMAScript"— Hidden chain-of-thought overhead. Clarification tokens.
Back of envelope: ~376M JS-related LLM queries/day globally. ~30% trigger some clarification overhead. That's ~5B extra tokens/day, ~1.85T tokens/year.
At ~0.000025 kWh/token inference cost, that's ~46 GWh/year.
~23,000 tonnes CO2 annually. ~200,000 tonnes over 4 years, based on rough growth of LLM use, and terms sticking around on both names over 4 years - probably wrong here too.
Sources
Token counts: OpenAI tiktoken cl100k_base encoder 2.5B ChatGPT queries/day: Sam Altman, July 2025 [1] ~4.7B total LLM interactions/day: aggregated from ChatGPT + Gemini (2B monthly AI Overviews users) + Copilot + Claude + others [2][3] JS = 62% of developers: Stack Overflow 2024 Survey [4] 8% of queries JS-related: my estimate based on language prevalence 30% clarification rate: my estimate - probably way off Energy/token: ~0.000025 kWh blended from Luccioni et al. and Patterson et al. inference estimates [5]
CO2: 0.5 kg/kWh global grid average
[1] techcrunch.com/2025/07/21/chatgpt-users-send-2-5-billion-prompts-a-day [2] demandsage.com/chatgpt-statistics [3] sqmagazine.co.uk/chatgpt-vs-google-gemini-statistics [4] survey.stackoverflow.co/2024 [5] arxiv.org/pdf/2211.02001 (BLOOM carbon footprint paper)