[gary_0]

Whenever anyone says "JavaScript" they actually mean "ECMAScript", which is the language browsers and scripting engines actually implement. The Web standard documents cannot use the term "JavaScript" because of the trademark issue.

There isn't even such a thing as "Oracle JavaScript", they are sitting on the trademark without using it.

[gklitz]

> Whenever anyone says "JavaScript" they actually mean "ECMAScript", which is the language browsers and scripting engines actually implement.

It’s the exact opposite though. Whenever someone says ECMAScript they actually mean “I want to say JavaScript but for legal reasons I’m using another name for it” but that also happens so rarely that it’s not worth considering.

If I invent a new term for iPads and say “well actually when people say iPad they mean ECMApad which is technically the same just a different branding of it” that doesn’t give me grounds to have Apples trademark on iPad discarded.

Programmers may not like it, but JavaScript is a pretty well established and robust trademark and people use it correctly to refer to the same one thing. The problem really just is that people don’t like the owners of it, but that’s hardly a case to have it invalidated.

[LelouBil]

> I invent a new term for iPads and say “well actually when people say iPad they mean ECMApad which is technically the same just a different branding of it” that doesn’t give me grounds to have Apples trademark on iPad discarded.

The point of a trademark is to protect Your brand.

Oracle doesn't make any product called JavaScript nor do they use JavaScript as a trademark in anything.

Your example with Apple is wrong because Apple makes devices that they call iPads.

[orf]

> and people use it correctly to refer to the same one thing.

Yes, ECMAScript, standardized here: https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/st...

[EMM_386]

I had ECMAScript on my resume (as JavaScript/ECMAScript) and a technical recruiter asked me what that was.

"Oh, I've never heard of ECMAScript before".

Well, it's a thing. You'll have to trust me on that one.

[irrational]

I’ve been using JavaScript since the first version in Netscape navigator. When I say JavaScript, that’s what I’m referring to. It may have had some things bolted on over the past quarter century, but I still think of it as that thing way back when.

[lolinder]

Technically from a legal perspective you aren't using JavaScript any more because it's being produced by a company (Google, Apple, whoever) who doesn't own the trademark to call it JavaScript. So it legally isn't JavaScript even if it's directly descended from something that was legally JavaScript.

The fact that you and everyone else still call this thing we have now JavaScript is exactly why this trademark thing is stupid and most likely invalid.