The War on JavaScript Just Got Interesting

The History of JavaScript

In 1995, the web was still in its infancy, and developers were experimenting with new ways to make websites more dynamic. Netscape, the company behind the dominant web browser of the era, decided to create a scripting language that could make websites interactive.

They called it Mocha at first, and then LiveScript, but what’s more interesting, is that Brendan Eich was asked to create this language in only 10 days, in an attempt from Netscape to gain an edge over Microsoft in their browser wars.

At the same time, Sun Microsystems was generating buzz with their revolutionary programming language. Java’s promise was ambitious. Write once, run anywhere. Developers were intrigued by the idea of a language that could seamlessly work across platforms.

So Netscape saw an opportunity to capitalize on Java’s popularity. They partnered with Sun Microsystems and rebranded LiveScript as JavaScript, despite the two languages being entirely different. This naming decision wasn’t about technology. It was a marketing attempt to ride the wave of Java’s growing fame.

Thanks to this publicity stunt, developers started paying attention, even though, under the hood, JavaScript had little to do with Java beyond some superficial syntax similarities.

Netscape’s gamble worked, and JavaScript quickly became a key part of the web’s evolution.

Fast forward to 2009, and Sun Microsystems, the company that initially trademarked the name ‘JavaScript,’ was acquired by Oracle. Oracle, a company best known for its databases and enterprise software, inherited all of Sun’s assets, including the JavaScript trademark.

But despite their trademark ownership, Oracle has no role in JavaScript’s evolution or standardization. That responsibility belongs to ECMA International, which oversees the ECMAScript standard. However, because the term JavaScript is trademarked, many official documents, conferences, and publications use ECMAScript instead to avoid legal issues.

ECMAScript vs JavaScript

As a consequence, Oracle’s ownership of the JavaScript trademark has raised eyebrows in the developer community over the years. While it hasn’t directly impacted day-to-day coding, it has created some confusion.

This situation has frustrated many developers who feel the trademark serves no real purpose and adds unnecessary complexity to JavaScript’s identity.

But things took a more serious turn in 2024 when prominent figures in the JavaScript community decided enough was enough. Ryan Dahl, the creator of Node.js, and Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript itself, alongside other influential developers, published an open letter urging Oracle to relinquish the trademark.

The first paragraph tells you everything you need to know. “You have long ago abandoned the JavaScript trademark, and it is causing widespread, unwarranted confusion and disruption.”

Then, in November 2024 Deno formally filed a petition to cancel Oracle’s trademark.

If successful, conferences could reclaim titles like “JavaScript Conference” instead of settling for “JSConf.” The language’s specification could finally drop the cumbersome “ECMAScript” in favor of a straightforward “JavaScript Specification”, and communities like “Rust for JavaScript Developers” would no longer fear legal threats over their use of the term.

So here we are - we’ve moved from browser wars, to framework wars and now to trademark wars. The web is, indeed, a fascinating place.

If you are interested in more deep dives into the web dev space you can check some of the other videos on my channel.

Until next time, thank you for reading!