I think they have a good point - the browser's internal language really should not be trademark-restricted. It gives control to a single company world-wide that simply should not be there in the first place.
the browser's internal language really should not be trademark-restricted
You could always refer to it by the name of the standard, ECMA Script. Might be interesting to see how that would affect the ranking of Java in various popularity trackers.
True, but at least they are a non profit, standards organization. That feels like the correct place for a trademark to be owned if one were to exist at all. And given that people are the worst, it’s probably better that it’s explicitly registered vs potentially allowing a malicious group to “steal” it and cause legal issues.
Generally speaking you "want" an entity to own / manage the trademark; it's actually "more" protected when it's successfully filed with an honest organization versus simply being up for grabs.
If Oracle did a press statement and had a good faith agreement to simply be the steward of the trademark I would honestly be okay with it; just own it, let people do whatever they want with it and or minimally regulate it to prevent abuse.
Ie. Some pornstar being named "Javascript" and now appearing in search rankings, you kinda want to litigate that and ensure it's only really being used appropriately (just as an example of why you want some organization to manage it).
why on earth would we bother saying four syllables when we can make do with two? ekma seems natural to me, but I could get onboard with esma. ee see emm ay on the other hand seems completely excessive.
Plus you know it'd wind up with people singing some rendition of "it's fun to stay at the e-c-m-a" at conferences and I absolutely am not encouraging that future
You could always refer to it by the name of the standard, ECMA Script.
The JavaScript language implements the ECMAScript standard, but it also adds a metric ton of hugely important features, like the entire DOM model, document, window, console, fetch, localStorage, setTimeout etc.
By referring to ECMAScript, you're also referring to JScript and ActionScript, and I guess almost no one is actually referring to those languages. If you indeed want to refer to the browser's internal language, "JavaScript" is the only correct name.
Just look at Google killing ublock origin via the evil Manifest v3. This was not an "accident" - that was a deliberate attack on the people.
Well not really. uBlock Origin Lite has existed for years and works just as well. You just swap them out and see the same number of ads as you did before.
Google controls that entire ecosystem. If they wanted to ban adblockers from the chrome web store, they would just do it. They don't need any kind of pretense, they control that entire ecosystem.
This is such a weird narrative. uBlock Origin Lite is a featured extension:
Removing adblockers could create an appearance of abusing monopoly position, an appearance I'm sure Google is eager to avoid.
Google is in a rather open war with ad blockers, and the MV3 rules mean that Google gets explicit editorial control over and advance notice of blocklist content. The conflict of interest is as obvious as the self-serving nature of the change.
They've been in the dominant position for more than a decade, they could have abused their position at any point during that time, they don't need MV3 to do that.
Google is in a rather open war with ad blockers
Yet they feature them prominently on the Google Chrome extensions page where millions upon millions of people install ad blockers from. There's a disconnect between the narrative and the reality.
If they didn't want ad blockers, they wouldn't have specifically expanded the allowed number of rulesets when ad blocker devs specifically said there weren't enough rules available. Google facilitated expanding the ruleset size multiple times specifically to acquiesce to ad blockers.
They've been in the dominant position for more than a decade, they could have abused their position at any point during that time, they don't need MV3 to do that.
They want to make everyone believe they're the good guys when it's obvious that profit is all they care about and it looks like the strategy works on those naive enough
They aren't receiving revenue from people who block ads already. Those people stopping use of Google products raises Google's revenue because they aren't wasting resources trying to show ads to people who block them.
They've been in the dominant position for more than a decade, they could have abused their position at any point
They do so and have done so since becoming dominant. There's a reason that Google often ships updates that "accidentally" run extremely badly on non-chromium browsers. Whoops, if only the largest website in the world had the resources to test better :(
And isn't it odd(ly suspicious) that [changing the user-agent fixes it][2023]?
But then, opening the homepage once is such a niche thing for a CI/CD centric company to test; surely there isn't [clear evidence of intentional malice here][2019], right?
Google facilitated expanding the ruleset size multiple times specifically to acquiesce to ad blockers.
Keeping ad blockers helps Google when they have editorial oversight and advance review of the block lists because their competitors don't get that privilege.
They do so and have done so since becoming dominant.
Not towards ad blockers, which is what the discussion was about. Why are you pointing to chickens when we're talking about ducks?
And isn't it odd(ly suspicious) that changing the user-agent fixes it?
Seems like a bug. Why would Google intentionally cripple a platform they prop up with half a billion dollars per year? Again, the narrative is broken.
Keeping ad blockers helps Google when they have editorial oversight and advance review of the block lists because their competitors don't get that privilege.
Considering most extension updates are the same day after a review request, this is just tinfoil hat territory. Again, the narrative is broken.
It's bizarre that you'd invoke as evidence discussions that blocker devs have had, because they specifically reject Google's arguments on the issue.
Yet when ad blocker devs requested more rulesets and cited that they didn't have enough, Google provided more by an order of magnitude. Why would they do that? They could have just cited some technical reason and said "sorry, we can't do it." Yet they enabled ad blockers to be more effective with a flip of a switch. Again, the narrative is extremely broken here and cobbled together with chewed gum.
Seems like a bug. Why would Google intentionally cripple a platform they prop up with half a billion dollars per year?
And yet it keeps happening. They do it to push people to Chrome-- "Ugh, firefox is broken again".
If Google was on the level here their regression testing would have immediately caught this before the pull was merged. It didn't because the regression was a feature.
this is just tinfoil hat territory
(Provided 4 links over 6 years including a two major Mozilla devs with decades of experience)
(Obvious nutcases)
Why would they do that?
Because it is irrelevant, they still control shipment of the rulesets. They can only be updated on a new extension release which Google has to approve. They can just delay release until Youtube is updated....
They do it to push people to Chrome-- "Ugh, firefox is broken again".
Firefox self sabotages without anyone else's help and it runs increasingly like garbage year after year. Last year they implemented a memory leak and gaslit people into thinking it was user error. Firefox is like what, 3% of browser share? I promise you Google is not going after Firefox's market share, it's incredibly tiny and your claims here are bordering conspiracy nut.
If Google was on the level here their regression testing would have immediately caught this before the pull was merged. It didn't because the regression was a feature.
More conspiracy. Have you ever heard of Hanlon's Razor? What's more likely, the bloated monolith frequently does a poor job at regression testing even their primary product, or that there's a secret cabal rubbing their hands together when they see Firefox browser share dip from 2.80% to 2.79% one quarter?
(Provided 4 links over 6 years including a two major Mozilla devs with decades of experience)
(Obvious nutcases)
You mean you provided grainy tweets, op eds, and social media comments from randos making claims in the ether.
Because it is irrelevant, they still control shipment of the rulesets. They can only be updated on a new extension release which Google has to approve. They can just delay release until Youtube is updated....
They could do anything they want, but they don't do any of the stuff you're claiming they "could do." You clearly have an ax to grind, so I'll leave you to it.
Adblockers really are a polarizing thing, huh? Everything you said is true and ManifestV3 is fully released. Adblockers still function perfectly well today in Chrome and there have been fewer sketchy chrome web store extension incidents (like The Great Suspender). So what was the downside for users?
It's just ignorant people crying about the sky falling over and over. They have some kind of belief not rooted in facts and cling to it regardless of actual reality in their face because the alternative is that they'd have to admit they are wrong.
V3 is primarily about preventing remote code execution, or allowing a dev to have arbitrary control of content served to users outside the ecosystem just by controlling the endpoint. Like you pointed out with the Great Suspender, that was becoming a more common pattern. Bad actors would buy extensions with large userbases, then feed them malicious code or inject ads etc. from the arbitrary endpoints embedded in the extension.
Now you can't do that and a very serious attack vector has been mitigated. Thanks Google.
Because Google announced the deprecation of Manifest V2 at some point in the future. The dev immediately made a Lite version with fewer features compliant for V3 for when that eventually happened. It took something like 5 years before the announcement of V3, and the dev didn't work on Lite during that time because there wasn't a need to.
All browsers announced full support for V3, so why do they go through all this trouble to maintain two versions and not switch to V3 completely, even going so far to keep the V2 version as the main version?
And why do you mention fewer features to be compliant with V3 when you previously stated that there's no functional difference between Lite and Full?
All browsers announced full support for V3, so why do they go through all this trouble to maintain two versions and not switch to V3 completely, even going so far to keep the V2 version as the main version?
Because they are allowed to operate whatever API version they want to. Chromium is open source, so if a fork wants to maintain V2, they can do that.
And why do you mention fewer features to be compliant with V3 when you previously stated that there's no functional difference between Lite and Full?
It wasn't fewer features to be compliant. The dev decided not to build out all the features of Origin in the Lite version. That was just a choice they made. For example, the Lite version didn't have the "Zap" ability until recently even though that had nothing to do with the API versioning.
You can keep trying to "gotcha" me, but all you're really doing is highlighting that you aren't reading very well.
There are very legitimate, non-evil reasons that Google wants Chrome to move from v2 to v3. Security and abuse prevention is a primary reason.
The main mechanism for ad blocking under Manifest v2 is the chrome.webRequest API. From the dev docs, this allows extensions to "observe and analyze traffic and to intercept, block, or modify requests in-flight".
This is an enormous amount of power to give an extension. It is quite literally performing a man-in-the-middle attack between the user and the rest of the Internet.
Furthermore, v2 also allows extensions to download and execute code from an external site, meaning that extensions are capable of making arbitrary self-modifications at runtime.
For an ad blocker, this is exactly what you what; the extension kills any outgoing requests that would go to an identified ad server. The extension can remotely host and frequently update the blacklist to keep up the arms race with advertisers. That's a terrific user experience.
But a malicious extension could do incredible harm to the user with these tools, and there'd be no way to know. They could censor content, like silently blocking any outgoing request to the Tiananmen Square Wikipedia page and substituting it with their own version. Or it could detect and leak sensitive information from your browsing history, like firing off a GET request with your account and routing number in the query params.
The change that manifest v3 makes is simple: the extension has to declare what it's going to do up-front. If an extension is going to block content from a specific domain, it has to say so in JSON cleartext that is provided when the extension is uploaded. This makes it so malicious behavior is easily detectable.
This doesn't kill ad blockers, but it does hurt them in the arms race with advertisers. If a new ad server comes online, a v2-based adblocker could have that server added to a remotely-hosted blacklist and start blocking its ads in minutes. But a v3-based adblocker can only update itself by pushing a new version of the extension, which you can't do instantly. There are also some detection patterns that can't be done statically/declaratively.
But it's simply a false narrative to say that Manifest v3 was maliciously designed to kill adblockers. It's designed to protect users from malicious extensions, and also improve performance. That's not evil.
MV3 extensions can only declare a limited number of block rules, a much smaller number than V2 extensions implement. So they can't block everything. And advertisers can circumvent blockers by just creating a bazillion URL patterns.
Plus all the dynamic behavior is gone. You can't allow certain sites to show ads, can't click on an ad you see to start blocking it, the extension can't use heuristics to detect ads that aren't in the block list.
Do you block origin guy has stated that "there is no Manifest v3 version of uBO". All we get is Lite, with severe limitations.
Lol there are NO security benefits for MV3. You can steal user sessions, inject code in sites, etc, all without net request. And the performance claims are also quite misleading. It really wasn't some massive performance hog and browsers have the capability to warn users about what extensions slowing the browser down...you know, like they already do.
What you can't do, however, is have intelligence in your adblocking because the company who makes chrome is incentivized to make it difficult to block ads. The declarative style has a lot of limitations.
If an extension is going to block content from a specific domain, it has to say so in JSON cleartext that is provided when the extension is uploaded.
This kills adblockers, plain and simple. You can claim that it doesn't all you want, but sending this gigantic list of malicious URLs to the browser, and releasing a new version every time this changes, kills any real chance of actually blocking ads on the internet.
Not to mention, even if it were feasible to implement things this way and keep up with the malicious actors trying to server unwanted content, you'd still only be able to block one type of ads. Things like YouTube ads and first-party ads need to be blocked in different ways, that are made impossible with Manifestv3.
Sure, Google has the "privacy and security" figleaf to hide behind to dupe people into believing that Manifest v3 is not about ads. But the reality of their incentives, and the impact, of this change is quite clear.
Especially since this idea that you can just install a random extension in your browser without having to trust the developers of that extension not to be malicious, even with Manifest v3, is complete BS. Don't install extensions that you don't trust, and then you have no need for gimped kneecapped extension support to "protect your security".
My computer, my decision, my responsibility for the consequences.
Google is an ad company that has been routinely and aggressively making their products worse to support ad growth since 2019, as shown by emails released during discovery in Oracle v Google. I therefore have no trust in their public statements regarding user security and absolutely see this move as an attempt to use their browser monopoly to continue to squeeze growth out of their ad monopoly while adding major maintenance burdens to any browsers that desire to continue to maintain v2 out of respect for their users.
As some random peanut gallery schmuck, I also don't quite see how fraud charges are relevant here. But I also don't really know what Oracle does with the JS trademark. As far as I'm aware it was just part of the Sun takeover. Are they actually particularly involved in the ecosystem?
As in, as far as I know the standard is done by the ecmascript working group or whatever, and the actual used implementations come from google (v8, also in node and I guess deno) and mozilla (spidermonkey).
So seems like if Oracle loses here they basically lose nothing that they were actually using, but if they win, we might get a situation where all the actual implementations get an incentive to switch name but otherwise continue as usual, so we get a situation with
ecmascript: the thing you previously called javascript
typescript: the thing you've been switching to anyway
That would be a favorable outcome. The name "Javascript" was chosen deliberately to parasitize the (then) popularity of Java. I think we've all heard anecdotes about recruiters asking JavaScript questions in Java interviews or vice versa. Ultimately, renaming JavaScript would be the best way to stop this confusion for good.
That would be a favorable outcome. The name "Javascript" was chosen deliberately to parasitize the (then) popularity of Java. I think we've all heard anecdotes about recruiters asking JavaScript questions in Java interviews or vice versa. Ultimately, renaming JavaScript would be the best way to stop this confusion for good.
The standardized version of JavaScript has been called ECMAScript since 1997. Nobody bothered to adopt the official name in the almost 30 years since. It's literally never going to happen.
I think we've all heard anecdotes about recruiters asking JavaScript questions in Java interviews or vice versa.
Why settle for anecdotes when you can be personally spammed to death by Java recruiters who can't read by simply adding "JavaScript" to your LinkedIn profile?
I think I actually did get some value out of setting all their notifications to none. But yeah, the only real solution is to keep blocking their entire sender domains.
I don't, I just filter them. But that's what I mean by "for better or worse" -- I'm more likely to read them than any other spam, and I have actually gotten some value out of them.
The ones I actually block are the ones that guess my work email address, instead of contacting me through either LinkedIn or the personal email on my resume. Work email is for alerting-system spam, not recruiting spam.
The standardized version of JavaScript has been called ECMAScript since 1997. Please explain to me how the incentives change if Oracle wins, which would return us to the status quo.
Part of how trademark law works is that the trademark holder has to defend it to prevent it becoming generic. What Dahl et al here are doing is pretty much arguing that it is already generic and so no longer a legal trademark.
In the outcome where it doesn't become legally recognized as no longer a trademark (wow double negative), there is a possibility that Oracle will wind up defending the trademark more aggressively. And Oracle does love siccing lawyers and the like at people.
Kind of similar to how the places I work have been very careful to not use Oracle Java. Some still had Oracle show up at their door.
In the outcome where it doesn't become legally recognized as no longer a trademark (wow double negative), there is a possibility that Oracle will wind up defending the trademark more aggressively. And Oracle does love siccing lawyers and the like at people.
You're saying that Oracle will win a court case that says: "What you've been doing in the 20 years since the Sun acquisition was totally fine. Your enforcement is sufficient" and therefore they will increase enforcement as a result of that judgement.
Please explain how that makes logical sense.
Surely the time to increase enforcement is now, while the case is being litigated? Why would a victory motivate them to increase enforcement?
Oracle Java is a totally different situation because Oracle wants licensing fees for that. It's a product that they sell. It's not a trademark. It's a product that they sell and want to maximize licensing fees for.
Of course they own the trademark. That's not what their lawyers and salespeople talk to you about when they come to visit you. They talk to you about the copyright on the source code that they claim you should be paying for.
They talk to you about the copyright on the source code that they claim you should be paying for.
Huh? While it is true they own the copyright on all OpenJDK source code it is licensed GPLv2+Class Path Exception. There are many vendors who provide free builds of OpenJDK (including Oracle themselves).
The only reason you would pay Oracle for Java is if you want paid support. In that case you would use Oracle JDK which is a build of OpenJDK you use if you buy paid java support from Oracle.
So seems like if Oracle loses here they basically lose nothing that they were actually using
It is because "JavaScript" contains the word Java and they are both programming languages. They don't have to use JavaScript because they have it to protect Java which they most certainly use.
They argued it was fraud because Oracle used the NodeJS website to show that their trademark was valid and should be protected, because Oracle had absolutely nothing to do with NodeJS, nor did they have the authority to use it in their trademark renewal.
If anything, NodeJS should have been an example of why the trademark shouldn't have been renewed because Oracle wasn't using protecting the trademark. In trademark law, if you don't protect your exclusive right to use a trademark you will lose it.
That is what the Deno team is trying to argue. JavaScript is a widely used term that should no longer be trademarkable. The Fraud was just an additional thing that they threw into the case because they thought they could make a good case for it (but apparently not).
Which by the way never happened in wrt Javascript.
In English, "might get a situation" indicates that I'm talking about a possible, hypothetical future here, not an existing past.
And if you were under the impression that "Jav—" was meant to expand to just "Java", I can assure you that it is meant to expand to "JavaScript™" or whatever symbols the Oracle legal department would have us use.
They used a screenshot of the node.js site as evidence they were still using the trademark. However they don’t run node.js. I think the idea was that showing evidence of node.js referring to JavaScript was lying, as they’re not involved in node.js. My assumption is that usage of the trademark is meant to be by that company.
That was my understanding anyway.
Essentially, Petitioner’s theory of fraud is based on allegations that the specimen of use submitted with Respondent’s maintenance documents do not show use by the proper party. It is well-settled that the proper ground for cancellation is the underlying question of whether the mark was in use in commerce, not the adequacy of the specimens.
Can someone give me details on this? If oracle got the trademark but JavaScript is open source, is oracle just asking people to call it by the generic name (eg. Ecmascript)? It would be annoying but not the end of the world, unless I’m missing something.
This blog post forgets one important fact regarding the fraud claim. Oracle submitted two exhibits of the use of JavaScript. Only the Node.js one was a mistake, they conceded to that mistake in their response. However, the 2nd exhibit was more than enough to show usage and the other mistaken exhibit was irrelevant.
I guess I am the rare person that thinks this trademark is perfectly valid. "JavaScript" contains the word "Java" (another oracle trademark) and both are programming languages. Confusion happens all the time between JavaScript and Java (mostly from non-programmers) so obviously their trademark for JavaScript is valid. This is exactly why they own it in the first place. Sun got the trademark for JavaScript and then licensed it to Netscape so Netscape could use the name JavaScript for their new language. Oracle of course got the trademark when they acquired Sun.
In the 1990's Netscape lawyers obviously believed calling their new language JavaScript would be a problem because of the Java trademark. So this is still true today.
There is no way in hell the trademark office is going to invalidate the JavaScript trademark.
They just need to release the next version of ECMAscript/javascript with a better name. Nobody is going to call it ECMAscript because it's just bad to say.
After 2 minutes of thought, I propose Kettlescript. There are no doubt other possibilities, but this would satisfy the main requirements I can think of.
It doesn't appear to be in use by anything (the hardest challenge)
It is easy to say with a clear pronunciation.
As a bonus, it clearly, but indirectly, references the existing name by linking Java and the Kettles used to brew it.
It is a hard subject, like even if Oracle let the Javascript trademark lapse I still think the name Java in a programming/technical context has always been protected. I'd argue that JS as a name should be allowed but slam dunk trademark law is to say the word "Java" can't be unless like they argue that Java in programming is a generic term which is dumb. Even Google didn't take this as an approach when talking about the Android case, that's why they called it something else.
This is exactly correct and is the reason there is no way Oracle will lose the trademark to JavaScript, because of their trademark on Java in relation to programming languages.
Even if they somehow did lose the trademark to JavaScript they still own the trademark on Java in relation to programming languages and no one is going to be able to call their programming related conference "JavaScript Conference".
So if I understand the dismissal correctly use of the Node.js screenshots by itself is not enough to show trademark fraud, they whould have had to claim and show that oracle was not using the trademark at all.
In other words, if the goal of these people is to show that the trademark was abadonned, as they claim in the blog post, they failed to clearly state so in their court filling.
So if I understand the dismissal correctly use of the Node.js screenshots by itself is not enough to show trademark fraud,
Oracle's trademark submission had two exhibits. The node.js screenshot was only one exhibit, so is irrelevant because of the 2nd exhibit. Oracle's response to the fraud claim a few months back absolutely eviscerated the fraud claim.
I don't understand. They need to jump through additional hoops because they can't use the trademarked names, but also refuse to just discuss and adopt a standardized non-trademarked name. If you want to keep the "js" file extension the same, then just pick a name that still fits like "JankyScript".
Going by the first paragraph of the blog post the court confirmed that Node.js is and has always been owned by Oracle. Any future use of Node.js will be licensed per core, you should reserve five cubic feet of space for the resulting stack of notifications and get in contact with your bank to secure a loan or two for payment. /s
On a more serious note: Nothing, the court dismissed the claims.
Oracle didn’t create it, didn’t run it, and wasn’t authorized to use it to prop up its trademark.
Brother it's their fucking trademark. You better fucking hope that the judge agrees with your abandonment claims, because when oracle wins this case they're going to be out for blood. There will be no more "JavaScript" because Oracle will have an actual reason and justification to defend their trademark.
This is a stupid bear to poke, good luck web bros.
I don't think this is the case here. They actually force Oracle to commit one way or the other. That's a PR problem for Oracle now. How could they win this argument?
shevy-java@reddit
I think they have a good point - the browser's internal language really should not be trademark-restricted. It gives control to a single company world-wide that simply should not be there in the first place.
josefx@reddit
You could always refer to it by the name of the standard, ECMA Script. Might be interesting to see how that would affect the ranking of Java in various popularity trackers.
kohuept@reddit
ECMAScript is a trademark of ECMA International.
MSgtGunny@reddit
True, but at least they are a non profit, standards organization. That feels like the correct place for a trademark to be owned if one were to exist at all. And given that people are the worst, it’s probably better that it’s explicitly registered vs potentially allowing a malicious group to “steal” it and cause legal issues.
FullPoet@reddit
And they arent know to litigate insane cases... yet.
anengineerandacat@reddit
Generally speaking you "want" an entity to own / manage the trademark; it's actually "more" protected when it's successfully filed with an honest organization versus simply being up for grabs.
If Oracle did a press statement and had a good faith agreement to simply be the steward of the trademark I would honestly be okay with it; just own it, let people do whatever they want with it and or minimally regulate it to prevent abuse.
Ie. Some pornstar being named "Javascript" and now appearing in search rankings, you kinda want to litigate that and ensure it's only really being used appropriately (just as an example of why you want some organization to manage it).
natural_sword@reddit
Since the trademark is relating to computers/programs, would they actually be stopped from using the name for something in a different industry?
FullPoet@reddit
#cocksout4javascript
takanuva@reddit
Well, everything is terrible.
dontquestionmyaction@reddit
Huh?
This is good though? Who else should have it but the independent standards organization?
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
Stop interrupting the reddit copyright hate-jerk.
Iggyhopper@reddit
We could shorten it. Or maybe leave out some letters... one moment...
JScript
...
... it's perfect.
syklemil@reddit
Idunno, I'd expect it to work more like [J](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_(programming_language)) then
hjklhlkj@reddit
Good idea, I like it, let's rename it to TerribleScript
NotNormo@reddit
Maybe if they'd come up with something easier and catchier to say we'd already have stopped saying "javascript".
syklemil@reddit
I've never understood how people find ecmascript hard to pronounce.
I've always read "ecmascript" as "ekmaskript", and "ekma" is just two syllables like "java"
Should also be somewhat possible to shorten it in a similar way as javascript->js and typescript->ts, to "es" (sorry spaniards).
ToastedGlucose@reddit
Why even keep the “script” part, just name it “ecma”
FullPoet@reddit
People dont say E C M A script?
syklemil@reddit
why on earth would we bother saying four syllables when we can make do with two? ekma seems natural to me, but I could get onboard with esma. ee see emm ay on the other hand seems completely excessive.
Plus you know it'd wind up with people singing some rendition of "it's fun to stay at the e-c-m-a" at conferences and I absolutely am not encouraging that future
FullPoet@reddit
E K M A script? Now thats silly!
axonxorz@reddit
Excema-script
AralSeaMariner@reddit
I think at its heart it suffers from dumbnameitis. I will never use that name, it's stupid.
withad@reddit
It's less "hard to pronounce" and more "sounds like a skin condition".
novagenesis@reddit
The hardest part to pronounce in ecmascript is the "tm" at the end.
sdw3489@reddit
WebScript? Bada bing, bada boom
skytomorrownow@reddit
The language formerly known as JavaScript? ⚦
wildjokers@reddit
May as well refer to it has Skin Disease Script then.
SoInsightful@reddit
The JavaScript language implements the ECMAScript standard, but it also adds a metric ton of hugely important features, like the entire DOM model,
document,window,console,fetch,localStorage,setTimeoutetc.By referring to ECMAScript, you're also referring to JScript and ActionScript, and I guess almost no one is actually referring to those languages. If you indeed want to refer to the browser's internal language, "JavaScript" is the only correct name.
alex-weej@reddit
I'm not sure this is accurate. A lot of what you describe is the Web API
syklemil@reddit
Heh, maybe TIOBE (which the thread starter here is a fan of using) would start showing ECMA as a top programming language? :\^)
knottheone@reddit
Well not really. uBlock Origin Lite has existed for years and works just as well. You just swap them out and see the same number of ads as you did before.
Google controls that entire ecosystem. If they wanted to ban adblockers from the chrome web store, they would just do it. They don't need any kind of pretense, they control that entire ecosystem.
This is such a weird narrative. uBlock Origin Lite is a featured extension:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh?hl=en
If they wanted to remove it, they just would.
Coffee_Ops@reddit
Removing adblockers could create an appearance of abusing monopoly position, an appearance I'm sure Google is eager to avoid.
Google is in a rather open war with ad blockers, and the MV3 rules mean that Google gets explicit editorial control over and advance notice of blocklist content. The conflict of interest is as obvious as the self-serving nature of the change.
knottheone@reddit
They've been in the dominant position for more than a decade, they could have abused their position at any point during that time, they don't need MV3 to do that.
Yet they feature them prominently on the Google Chrome extensions page where millions upon millions of people install ad blockers from. There's a disconnect between the narrative and the reality.
If they didn't want ad blockers, they wouldn't have specifically expanded the allowed number of rulesets when ad blocker devs specifically said there weren't enough rules available. Google facilitated expanding the ruleset size multiple times specifically to acquiesce to ad blockers.
Maybe-monad@reddit
They want to make everyone believe they're the good guys when it's obvious that profit is all they care about and it looks like the strategy works on those naive enough
knottheone@reddit
If profit was all they care about, they would just ban ad blockers. Again, highlighting the disconnect here.
Maybe-monad@reddit
Banning adblockers would help people see them how they really are and stop using their products which kills profits.
knottheone@reddit
They aren't receiving revenue from people who block ads already. Those people stopping use of Google products raises Google's revenue because they aren't wasting resources trying to show ads to people who block them.
Coffee_Ops@reddit
They do so and have done so since becoming dominant. There's a reason that Google often ships updates that "accidentally" run extremely badly on non-chromium browsers. Whoops, if only the largest website in the world had the resources to test better :(
And isn't it odd(ly suspicious) that [changing the user-agent fixes it][2023]?
But then, opening the homepage once is such a niche thing for a CI/CD centric company to test; surely there isn't [clear evidence of intentional malice here][2019], right?
Keeping ad blockers helps Google when they have editorial oversight and advance review of the block lists because their competitors don't get that privilege.
knottheone@reddit
Not towards ad blockers, which is what the discussion was about. Why are you pointing to chickens when we're talking about ducks?
Seems like a bug. Why would Google intentionally cripple a platform they prop up with half a billion dollars per year? Again, the narrative is broken.
Considering most extension updates are the same day after a review request, this is just tinfoil hat territory. Again, the narrative is broken.
Yet when ad blocker devs requested more rulesets and cited that they didn't have enough, Google provided more by an order of magnitude. Why would they do that? They could have just cited some technical reason and said "sorry, we can't do it." Yet they enabled ad blockers to be more effective with a flip of a switch. Again, the narrative is extremely broken here and cobbled together with chewed gum.
Coffee_Ops@reddit
And yet it keeps happening. They do it to push people to Chrome-- "Ugh, firefox is broken again".
If Google was on the level here their regression testing would have immediately caught this before the pull was merged. It didn't because the regression was a feature.
(Provided 4 links over 6 years including a two major Mozilla devs with decades of experience)
(Obvious nutcases)
Because it is irrelevant, they still control shipment of the rulesets. They can only be updated on a new extension release which Google has to approve. They can just delay release until Youtube is updated....
knottheone@reddit
Firefox self sabotages without anyone else's help and it runs increasingly like garbage year after year. Last year they implemented a memory leak and gaslit people into thinking it was user error. Firefox is like what, 3% of browser share? I promise you Google is not going after Firefox's market share, it's incredibly tiny and your claims here are bordering conspiracy nut.
More conspiracy. Have you ever heard of Hanlon's Razor? What's more likely, the bloated monolith frequently does a poor job at regression testing even their primary product, or that there's a secret cabal rubbing their hands together when they see Firefox browser share dip from 2.80% to 2.79% one quarter?
You mean you provided grainy tweets, op eds, and social media comments from randos making claims in the ether.
They could do anything they want, but they don't do any of the stuff you're claiming they "could do." You clearly have an ax to grind, so I'll leave you to it.
ninjainvisible@reddit
Adblockers really are a polarizing thing, huh? Everything you said is true and ManifestV3 is fully released. Adblockers still function perfectly well today in Chrome and there have been fewer sketchy chrome web store extension incidents (like The Great Suspender). So what was the downside for users?
https://www.techradar.com/news/this-hugely-popular-chrome-extension-was-riddled-with-malware
knottheone@reddit
It's just ignorant people crying about the sky falling over and over. They have some kind of belief not rooted in facts and cling to it regardless of actual reality in their face because the alternative is that they'd have to admit they are wrong.
V3 is primarily about preventing remote code execution, or allowing a dev to have arbitrary control of content served to users outside the ecosystem just by controlling the endpoint. Like you pointed out with the Great Suspender, that was becoming a more common pattern. Bad actors would buy extensions with large userbases, then feed them malicious code or inject ads etc. from the arbitrary endpoints embedded in the extension.
Now you can't do that and a very serious attack vector has been mitigated. Thanks Google.
OMG_A_CUPCAKE@reddit
It wouldn't need to be called "Lite" if it had the same functionality as the "full" version
knottheone@reddit
The user experience is exactly the same. Install both and navigate to all your normal sites. Toggle them on and off, you won't notice a difference.
OMG_A_CUPCAKE@reddit
Why did they dev develop Lite if they obviously didn't want to put much effort into it?
knottheone@reddit
Because Google announced the deprecation of Manifest V2 at some point in the future. The dev immediately made a Lite version with fewer features compliant for V3 for when that eventually happened. It took something like 5 years before the announcement of V3, and the dev didn't work on Lite during that time because there wasn't a need to.
OMG_A_CUPCAKE@reddit
All browsers announced full support for V3, so why do they go through all this trouble to maintain two versions and not switch to V3 completely, even going so far to keep the V2 version as the main version?
And why do you mention fewer features to be compliant with V3 when you previously stated that there's no functional difference between Lite and Full?
knottheone@reddit
Because they are allowed to operate whatever API version they want to. Chromium is open source, so if a fork wants to maintain V2, they can do that.
It wasn't fewer features to be compliant. The dev decided not to build out all the features of Origin in the Lite version. That was just a choice they made. For example, the Lite version didn't have the "Zap" ability until recently even though that had nothing to do with the API versioning.
You can keep trying to "gotcha" me, but all you're really doing is highlighting that you aren't reading very well.
tiedyedvortex@reddit
There are very legitimate, non-evil reasons that Google wants Chrome to move from v2 to v3. Security and abuse prevention is a primary reason.
The main mechanism for ad blocking under Manifest v2 is the chrome.webRequest API. From the dev docs, this allows extensions to "observe and analyze traffic and to intercept, block, or modify requests in-flight".
This is an enormous amount of power to give an extension. It is quite literally performing a man-in-the-middle attack between the user and the rest of the Internet.
Furthermore, v2 also allows extensions to download and execute code from an external site, meaning that extensions are capable of making arbitrary self-modifications at runtime.
For an ad blocker, this is exactly what you what; the extension kills any outgoing requests that would go to an identified ad server. The extension can remotely host and frequently update the blacklist to keep up the arms race with advertisers. That's a terrific user experience.
But a malicious extension could do incredible harm to the user with these tools, and there'd be no way to know. They could censor content, like silently blocking any outgoing request to the Tiananmen Square Wikipedia page and substituting it with their own version. Or it could detect and leak sensitive information from your browsing history, like firing off a GET request with your account and routing number in the query params.
The change that manifest v3 makes is simple: the extension has to declare what it's going to do up-front. If an extension is going to block content from a specific domain, it has to say so in JSON cleartext that is provided when the extension is uploaded. This makes it so malicious behavior is easily detectable.
This doesn't kill ad blockers, but it does hurt them in the arms race with advertisers. If a new ad server comes online, a v2-based adblocker could have that server added to a remotely-hosted blacklist and start blocking its ads in minutes. But a v3-based adblocker can only update itself by pushing a new version of the extension, which you can't do instantly. There are also some detection patterns that can't be done statically/declaratively.
But it's simply a false narrative to say that Manifest v3 was maliciously designed to kill adblockers. It's designed to protect users from malicious extensions, and also improve performance. That's not evil.
rossisdead@reddit
That might be believable if it wasn't being led by a multi billion dollar company that sells advertising.
spiffytech@reddit
MV3 extensions can only declare a limited number of block rules, a much smaller number than V2 extensions implement. So they can't block everything. And advertisers can circumvent blockers by just creating a bazillion URL patterns.
Plus all the dynamic behavior is gone. You can't allow certain sites to show ads, can't click on an ad you see to start blocking it, the extension can't use heuristics to detect ads that aren't in the block list.
Do you block origin guy has stated that "there is no Manifest v3 version of uBO". All we get is Lite, with severe limitations.
Somepotato@reddit
Lol there are NO security benefits for MV3. You can steal user sessions, inject code in sites, etc, all without net request. And the performance claims are also quite misleading. It really wasn't some massive performance hog and browsers have the capability to warn users about what extensions slowing the browser down...you know, like they already do.
What you can't do, however, is have intelligence in your adblocking because the company who makes chrome is incentivized to make it difficult to block ads. The declarative style has a lot of limitations.
tsimionescu@reddit
This kills adblockers, plain and simple. You can claim that it doesn't all you want, but sending this gigantic list of malicious URLs to the browser, and releasing a new version every time this changes, kills any real chance of actually blocking ads on the internet.
Not to mention, even if it were feasible to implement things this way and keep up with the malicious actors trying to server unwanted content, you'd still only be able to block one type of ads. Things like YouTube ads and first-party ads need to be blocked in different ways, that are made impossible with Manifestv3.
Sure, Google has the "privacy and security" figleaf to hide behind to dupe people into believing that Manifest v3 is not about ads. But the reality of their incentives, and the impact, of this change is quite clear.
Especially since this idea that you can just install a random extension in your browser without having to trust the developers of that extension not to be malicious, even with Manifest v3, is complete BS. Don't install extensions that you don't trust, and then you have no need for gimped kneecapped extension support to "protect your security".
Nyefan@reddit
My computer, my decision, my responsibility for the consequences.
Google is an ad company that has been routinely and aggressively making their products worse to support ad growth since 2019, as shown by emails released during discovery in Oracle v Google. I therefore have no trust in their public statements regarding user security and absolutely see this move as an attempt to use their browser monopoly to continue to squeeze growth out of their ad monopoly while adding major maintenance burdens to any browsers that desire to continue to maintain v2 out of respect for their users.
archerx@reddit
5 Google bucks have been deposited into your account.
Cafuzzler@reddit
Yeah! And the language on SIM cards shouldn't be trademarked either!/s
syklemil@reddit
As some random peanut gallery schmuck, I also don't quite see how fraud charges are relevant here. But I also don't really know what Oracle does with the JS trademark. As far as I'm aware it was just part of the Sun takeover. Are they actually particularly involved in the ecosystem?
As in, as far as I know the standard is done by the ecmascript working group or whatever, and the actual used implementations come from google (v8, also in node and I guess deno) and mozilla (spidermonkey).
So seems like if Oracle loses here they basically lose nothing that they were actually using, but if they win, we might get a situation where all the actual implementations get an incentive to switch name but otherwise continue as usual, so we get a situation with
Trang0ul@reddit
That would be a favorable outcome. The name "Javascript" was chosen deliberately to parasitize the (then) popularity of Java. I think we've all heard anecdotes about recruiters asking JavaScript questions in Java interviews or vice versa. Ultimately, renaming JavaScript would be the best way to stop this confusion for good.
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
The standardized version of JavaScript has been called ECMAScript since 1997. Nobody bothered to adopt the official name in the almost 30 years since. It's literally never going to happen.
kettal@reddit
With a name like ECMAScript I can't imagine why
Trang0ul@reddit
True, this mix of upper case and camel case is horrible.
josefx@reddit
People have been using the short form for specific versions, like ES5 or ES6.
Chirimorin@reddit
Why settle for anecdotes when you can be personally spammed to death by Java recruiters who can't read by simply adding "JavaScript" to your LinkedIn profile?
syklemil@reddit
Because then I'd actually have to log into linkedin?
I thought we all just had accounts there to reduce the amount of spam emails they'd otherwise send us
SanityInAnarchy@reddit
It doesn't actually reduce the spam, for better or worse.
syklemil@reddit
I think I actually did get some value out of setting all their notifications to none. But yeah, the only real solution is to keep blocking their entire sender domains.
SanityInAnarchy@reddit
I don't, I just filter them. But that's what I mean by "for better or worse" -- I'm more likely to read them than any other spam, and I have actually gotten some value out of them.
The ones I actually block are the ones that guess my work email address, instead of contacting me through either LinkedIn or the personal email on my resume. Work email is for alerting-system spam, not recruiting spam.
FujiKeynote@reddit
What I don't get is how all of this would reflect on the mime type that's already been enshrined as
text/javascriptjosefx@reddit
Nearly every webbrowser out there identifies as Mozilla(TM), Windows(TM), Apple(TM) WebKit, Safari(TM) and Chrome(TM). So probably no impact at all.
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
The standardized version of JavaScript has been called ECMAScript since 1997. Please explain to me how the incentives change if Oracle wins, which would return us to the status quo.
syklemil@reddit
Part of how trademark law works is that the trademark holder has to defend it to prevent it becoming generic. What Dahl et al here are doing is pretty much arguing that it is already generic and so no longer a legal trademark.
In the outcome where it doesn't become legally recognized as no longer a trademark (wow double negative), there is a possibility that Oracle will wind up defending the trademark more aggressively. And Oracle does love siccing lawyers and the like at people.
Kind of similar to how the places I work have been very careful to not use Oracle Java. Some still had Oracle show up at their door.
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
You're saying that Oracle will win a court case that says: "What you've been doing in the 20 years since the Sun acquisition was totally fine. Your enforcement is sufficient" and therefore they will increase enforcement as a result of that judgement.
Please explain how that makes logical sense.
Surely the time to increase enforcement is now, while the case is being litigated? Why would a victory motivate them to increase enforcement?
Oracle Java is a totally different situation because Oracle wants licensing fees for that. It's a product that they sell. It's not a trademark. It's a product that they sell and want to maximize licensing fees for.
wildjokers@reddit
Oracle absolutely does own the trademark to "Java" in relation to programming languages.
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
Of course they own the trademark. That's not what their lawyers and salespeople talk to you about when they come to visit you. They talk to you about the copyright on the source code that they claim you should be paying for.
wildjokers@reddit
Huh? While it is true they own the copyright on all OpenJDK source code it is licensed GPLv2+Class Path Exception. There are many vendors who provide free builds of OpenJDK (including Oracle themselves).
The only reason you would pay Oracle for Java is if you want paid support. In that case you would use Oracle JDK which is a build of OpenJDK you use if you buy paid java support from Oracle.
wildjokers@reddit
It is because "JavaScript" contains the word Java and they are both programming languages. They don't have to use JavaScript because they have it to protect Java which they most certainly use.
120785456214@reddit
They argued it was fraud because Oracle used the NodeJS website to show that their trademark was valid and should be protected, because Oracle had absolutely nothing to do with NodeJS, nor did they have the authority to use it in their trademark renewal.
If anything, NodeJS should have been an example of why the trademark shouldn't have been renewed because Oracle wasn't using protecting the trademark. In trademark law, if you don't protect your exclusive right to use a trademark you will lose it.
That is what the Deno team is trying to argue. JavaScript is a widely used term that should no longer be trademarkable. The Fraud was just an additional thing that they threw into the case because they thought they could make a good case for it (but apparently not).
znpy@reddit
Which by the way never happened in wrt Javascript.
syklemil@reddit
In English, "might get a situation" indicates that I'm talking about a possible, hypothetical future here, not an existing past.
And if you were under the impression that "Jav—" was meant to expand to just "Java", I can assure you that it is meant to expand to "JavaScript™" or whatever symbols the Oracle legal department would have us use.
lostdoormat@reddit
They used a screenshot of the node.js site as evidence they were still using the trademark. However they don’t run node.js. I think the idea was that showing evidence of node.js referring to JavaScript was lying, as they’re not involved in node.js. My assumption is that usage of the trademark is meant to be by that company. That was my understanding anyway.
khsh01@reddit
Maybe this will finally force the world to forgo js for everything now.
Solonotix@reddit
The key passage (in my reading) seems to be
gonzo5622@reddit
Mhmm, oh, yup.. ahum. I know some of these words!
gonzo5622@reddit
Can someone give me details on this? If oracle got the trademark but JavaScript is open source, is oracle just asking people to call it by the generic name (eg. Ecmascript)? It would be annoying but not the end of the world, unless I’m missing something.
wildjokers@reddit
This blog post forgets one important fact regarding the fraud claim. Oracle submitted two exhibits of the use of JavaScript. Only the Node.js one was a mistake, they conceded to that mistake in their response. However, the 2nd exhibit was more than enough to show usage and the other mistaken exhibit was irrelevant.
I guess I am the rare person that thinks this trademark is perfectly valid. "JavaScript" contains the word "Java" (another oracle trademark) and both are programming languages. Confusion happens all the time between JavaScript and Java (mostly from non-programmers) so obviously their trademark for JavaScript is valid. This is exactly why they own it in the first place. Sun got the trademark for JavaScript and then licensed it to Netscape so Netscape could use the name JavaScript for their new language. Oracle of course got the trademark when they acquired Sun.
In the 1990's Netscape lawyers obviously believed calling their new language JavaScript would be a problem because of the Java trademark. So this is still true today.
There is no way in hell the trademark office is going to invalidate the JavaScript trademark.
teslas_love_pigeon@reddit
Yeah, don't disagree and it really feels like Ryan Dahl of Deno is using this as a marketing gimmick.
There was a suggestion elsewhere that we should call Javascript WebScript since we already use terms like WebWorkers, WebGPU, WebRTC.
WebScript feels perfectly appropriate.
Due_Ad_2994@reddit
Oracle won a legal dispute? Crazy
Fritzed@reddit
They just need to release the next version of ECMAscript/javascript with a better name. Nobody is going to call it ECMAscript because it's just bad to say.
After 2 minutes of thought, I propose Kettlescript. There are no doubt other possibilities, but this would satisfy the main requirements I can think of.
As a bonus, it clearly, but indirectly, references the existing name by linking Java and the Kettles used to brew it.
FlukyS@reddit
It is a hard subject, like even if Oracle let the Javascript trademark lapse I still think the name Java in a programming/technical context has always been protected. I'd argue that JS as a name should be allowed but slam dunk trademark law is to say the word "Java" can't be unless like they argue that Java in programming is a generic term which is dumb. Even Google didn't take this as an approach when talking about the Android case, that's why they called it something else.
wildjokers@reddit
This is exactly correct and is the reason there is no way Oracle will lose the trademark to JavaScript, because of their trademark on Java in relation to programming languages.
Even if they somehow did lose the trademark to JavaScript they still own the trademark on Java in relation to programming languages and no one is going to be able to call their programming related conference "JavaScript Conference".
__konrad@reddit
I think the ® symbol should be used in case of registered trademarks (?)
happyscrappy@reddit
I think that's only used in the US. And even then not consistently.
josefx@reddit
So if I understand the dismissal correctly use of the Node.js screenshots by itself is not enough to show trademark fraud, they whould have had to claim and show that oracle was not using the trademark at all.
In other words, if the goal of these people is to show that the trademark was abadonned, as they claim in the blog post, they failed to clearly state so in their court filling.
wildjokers@reddit
Oracle's trademark submission had two exhibits. The node.js screenshot was only one exhibit, so is irrelevant because of the 2nd exhibit. Oracle's response to the fraud claim a few months back absolutely eviscerated the fraud claim.
znpy@reddit
Useless non-issue. We could just call it EcmaScript and be done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript
daniel_alexis1@reddit
ECMAScript belongs to ECMA International
NineThreeFour1@reddit
Then call it "WebScript" or "HyperScript" or whatever. Such a stupid waste of time if you ask me.
zanza19@reddit
For people that rely on being 100% accurate on words for a living, you would think this would matter more.
NineThreeFour1@reddit
I don't understand. They need to jump through additional hoops because they can't use the trademarked names, but also refuse to just discuss and adopt a standardized non-trademarked name. If you want to keep the "js" file extension the same, then just pick a name that still fits like "JankyScript".
xaddak@reddit
Is that bad?
SoInsightful@reddit
The very first sentence:
I, for one, would be happy with a freely usable name that doesn't also refer to ActionScript.
ihatebeinganonymous@reddit
I'm repeating what I stole from another forum because it's such a brilliant idea: Just call the language JS and solve more than one problem at once.
NineThreeFour1@reddit
Nonono, we have to discuss the new name for 40 years without reaching a conclusion.
IndividualSpare460@reddit
👍🏿what are the features to the new update
shevy-java@reddit
Which update?
lachlanhunt@reddit
I think they were making a joke implying the JavaScript Trademark Update is a software update with new features.
josefx@reddit
Going by the first paragraph of the blog post the court confirmed that Node.js is and has always been owned by Oracle. Any future use of Node.js will be licensed per core, you should reserve five cubic feet of space for the resulting stack of notifications and get in contact with your bank to secure a loan or two for payment. /s
On a more serious note: Nothing, the court dismissed the claims.
ToaruBaka@reddit
Brother it's their fucking trademark. You better fucking hope that the judge agrees with your abandonment claims, because when oracle wins this case they're going to be out for blood. There will be no more "JavaScript" because Oracle will have an actual reason and justification to defend their trademark.
This is a stupid bear to poke, good luck web bros.
shevy-java@reddit
I don't think this is the case here. They actually force Oracle to commit one way or the other. That's a PR problem for Oracle now. How could they win this argument?
ToaruBaka@reddit
Oracle is a law firm. They don't need PR.
BlueGoliath@reddit
Oh, another episode in the webdev drama TV show.