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Oracle, to my knowledge, does not profit at all off of the JavaScript name or brand. I don't see the purpose of defending this lawsuit. They have an opportuni
by maxk42 1y ago
Oracle, to my knowledge, does not profit at all off of the JavaScript name or brand. I don't see the purpose of defending this lawsuit. They have an opportunity to create some goodwill here, hold a press release, and say "We're gifting the JavaScript trademark to the developer community!" But instead they're defending something that they literally do not profit off of. It's absurd.
- arp242 1y agoLawnmowers are incapable of caring about goodwill.
- Findecanor 1y agoQuoting Bryan Cantrill? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2302s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2302s
- ryandrake 1y agoEveryone who passionately defends a big company’s honor online needs to watch and understand that bit! Companies are not humans with feelings and empathy. They’re all lawnmowers. That they happen to be made of people doesn’t change their nature.
- throwaway2037 1y agoI'm not here to troll on Bryan nor Oxide, but wouldn't your same "rule" apply to Oxide?
- globular-toast 1y agoWorth starting at 34:05 if you haven't seen it before.
- relativeadv 1y agoOracle is doing something petty and absurd? Are you sure?
- drdaeman 1y agoNowadays, it's a lawyer company - not a technology/software company. Their only reason for existence is to keep selling licenses for the things they own for as long as they still can, so it's pretty natural they're holding on to anything (regardless of actual value) they can.
- vips7L 1y agoIt’s a huge company with different divisions. Oracle is one of the leading researchers in JIT compilers, garbage collectors, and language interpreters.
- bigiain 1y agoPart of me thinks that's just the Oracle equivalent of janitorial and catering staff, the people you need to keep around to ensure the people creating the company profit, the sales people and lawyers, can work most efficiently.
- coldpie 1y agoI would never hire someone with Oracle on their resume. The complete lack of morals it takes to work there is immediately disqualifying.
- kstrauser 1y agoHarsh, but understandable. I’d make an exception for first job out of school people. They might not know better yet. If someone worked for an Oracle customer before going to work for Larry, though, I’d be convinced they were the devil incarnate.
- WD-42 1y agoThey have lawyers that need to justify their salary. Also why would they give up something for nothing. This is the “market forces” at work.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoI think this is key. When you hire people to do work, they'll find stuff to do even if it isn't really necessary or a long term good for the company. My favorite other example of this is when I see a UI redesign that didn't actually benefit anyone and was more a style change than anything, and sometimes actively makes usability worse (cough Liquid Glass cough) In those situations I always think "well, some designers on staff needed to justify their paychecks".
- lovich 1y agoThese are all the result of the principal agent problem https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/principal-agent-problem.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/principal-agent-problem...
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoI think this is actually a bit different than the principal agent problem, at least how the principal agent problem is normally described and envisioned. E.g. you often imagine cases like a manager making a decision that causes a short term pop in stock price (and bonuses to the manager) to the detriment of the long term health of the company when thinking about the principal agent problem. In the cases I'm thinking about, though, it's more that people rarely can do nothing, even if that's sometimes the best thing to do. E.g. large companies need to have lawyers and designers on staff for lots of reasons. But sometimes there just isn't enough work for these folks to do (even if they need to be "warm" and ready when important work comes along). And if there isn't enough work to do, these people will find work to do. This is another reason why I think that, even though layoffs are painful, having people "milling about" without clear direction and purpose is the worst for everyone involved. These people will just schedule meetings, insert themselves where it isn't helpful, etc., just to make it seem like they have a purpose. This could be thought of as a "variant" of the principal agent problem I guess, but this instance of "idle hands are the devil's playthings" is different enough from the "standard" principal agent problem that I don't think it's helpful to conflate these two things.
- NBJack 1y agoProbably a reflexive action at this point. Ingrained into what's left of their soul I assume. It literally wouldn't surprise me if when asked, the legal team simply responded "it's standing policy".
- theturtle32 1y ago"soul"? Oracle never had one in the first place.
- homebrewer 1y agoThey could reverse 90% of their brand damage in one swing by simply updating CDDL to allow integrating ZFS with GPL, which also wouldn't cost them anything as far as I'm aware, but we're both making the mistake of anthropomorphizing the lawnmower.
- ksec 1y ago>by simply updating CDDL How about a simpler solution, just relicense everything to BSD / MIT.
- ndiddy 1y agoThe version of ZFS that everybody (besides the dwindling number of Oracle Solaris customers) uses now, OpenZFS, has been maintained completely independently of Oracle since they shut down OpenSolaris in 2010. This means that Oracle relicensing ZFS wouldn't do anything to help with getting it integrated into the Linux kernel, since there's been hundreds of independent contributors to ZFS since then who all own their own copyrights. Because ZFS is licensed under the CDDL, which has an automatic upgrade clause, Oracle could simply copy/paste the GPLv2 license text and call it "CDDL v2" if they wanted to make ZFS able to be included in Linux.
- saghm 1y agoSwapping to an entirely new license rather than adding one sentence to the existing one is not simpler either in terms of linguistics or getting approval from their army of lawyers.
- justinator 1y agoWell you just used "Oracle" and "JavaScript" in the same sentence so it seems it's useful to them to reinforce their brand. Whoever thinks it's a good idea to bet on the altruism of a giant faceless corporation is dumb.
- tgma 1y agoI mean I get Oracle hate and stuff, but remember the great and lovely Sun Microsystems used all tricks in the bag against Microsoft with respect to Java late 90s/early 2000s. So, is "X abuses IP law" hatred is out of principle or because folks seem to be in love with Sun and Google and hate Oracle and Microsoft.
- mcv 1y agoBecause Microsoft was trying to takeover and change Java, and Sun actually made Java. How is that in any way the same situation as this?
- tgma 1y agoTake over and change? They were adding functionality: embrace and extend. It wasn't like most reasonable people wouldn't agree it was lowercase "javascript". Seems pretty similar to what's happening today.
- flomo 1y agoSpecifically, this is why Internet Explorer had "JScript". Microsoft did bad things to Java and lost their trademark license.
- randyrand 1y agoNo need to “gift” it. It would be better if no one owned the trademark. Put it in the public domain. I’m not sure if that’s even possible under US law though.
- burnte 1y agoOracle is a law firm that sells IP. They'd rather control and strangle the name JavaScript than let people use it without their control.
- N7lo4nl34akaoSN 1y agoThey profit through conflation with Java.
- xyst 1y agoOracle and "goodwill" in the same sentence is laughable.
- greggsy 1y agoThis is the wrong way to look at it from a business perspective. They don’t directly profit off licensing or support or anything like that, but they gain free advertising. They gain absolutely nothing by handing over the name and brand - in fact they lose valuable brand recognition. Obviously most people in the industry hate them with a passion (see this thread as evidence), but many see the association as evidence that they might at least have some expertise with that product set. I certainly don’t agree with their position, but it makes sense commercially.
- msinclair 1y agoHow are they going to lose brand recognition, when a majority of people do not associate JavaScript with Oracle? The only language I associate with Oracle is Java.
- madeofpalk 1y agoBrand recognition for what? No one thinks of Oracle when they see JavaScript.
- danparsonson 1y agoIn fact for myself, today was the first day I knew Oracle have anything whatsoever to do with JavaScript.
- fourthark 1y agoOracle purchased Sun, which purchased Netscape. I had to look it up. Edit: more complete history https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44408760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44408760
- Zafira 1y ago> Oracle, to my knowledge, does not profit at all off of the JavaScript name or brand. At this time, but their ownership and past behavior indicates that if Deno or anyone else tries to have a paid offering, there’s a non-zero chance Oracle will come sniffing for low effort money.
- Quekid5 1y ago"Oracle" and goodwill is not a thing.
- breve 1y ago> They have an opportunity to create some goodwill here According to Bryan Cantrill, you don't need to be open minded about Oracle. It's a waste of the openness of your mind. He says what you think of Oracle is even truer than you think it is. He believes there has been no entity in human history with less complexity and nuance to it than Oracle. Bryan warns, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing 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' -- the lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s
- jjice 1y agoThere is nothing I take more glee in than listening to bcantrill talk negatively of Oracle. Whenever Oracle comes up in one of his talks or a podcast, I know I'm in for a treat.
- heybales 1y agoThis is so true. And in my experience Oracle's main business seems to be getting companies to sign complicated contracts, waiting a year or two, and then suing them for some infraction so that they can extort another contract from them. I haven't met an Oracle product yet that can't be done better by either free software or a less litigious company.
- ocdtrekkie 1y agoBroadcom has entered the chat. It's wild that cease and desists and audit notices are becoming common ways to punish someone for just... not renewing your contract.
- pavlov 1y agoFormer Twitter has been suing its customers if they don’t spend enough money on ads on the platform. Tech companies and oligarchs are incredibly entitled.
- ninetyninenine 1y agolawyers need something to do.
- worldsayshi 1y agoThere's plenty of useful to do. Too bad they don't get paid to do that.
- madaxe_again 1y agoYeah, they could be suing an orphanage or enabling the development of strip-mines in virgin rainforest. Honestly, oracle is a pretty effective containment vessel for fine legal minds.
- worldsayshi 1y agoI have a feeling that a lot of big corps somehow work as effective containment vessels for decent workforce this way. It feels like a conspiracy but it doesn't make sense as one to me.
- dad_chowder 1y agoAlmost like they’re not very smart people!
- thayne 1y agoThe only logical reason I can think of to fight to keep the trademark is that they specifically don't want any goodwill, and that want to maintain their reputation as ruthless litigators.
- mcv 1y agoHow is it that Oracle gets to claim this trademark at all? They never created it, Netscape did. Oracle bought Sun which could have challenged Netscape for naming JavaScript after Java, but I don't think they ever did.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- giancarlostoro 1y agoIsn't the entire reason because they funded JavaScript and in order to protect Java's trademark they maintain it just in case? I think that's the real simple answer. Feel free to educate me if someone knows different.
- rplnt 1y ago"Corporate goodwill" is an oxymoron.
- notarobot123 1y agoits a euphemism for "avoiding reputational damage"
- hamilyon2 1y agoConfusing everyone about java license situation is another example. I think lawnmower metaphor never was accurate or helped to get it. Oracle is an alligator or a snake. A reptile. If you move, it will probably eat you alive. It wants to eat you, or part of you. It also lives in the waterhole, hoarding an essential resource. Not guarding or developing it, just sitting there. It is ancient and will never change. It's not alligator's fault for being predator. It is it's nature
- wraptile 1y ago> They have an opportunity to create some goodwill here This would be first event of that kind to my knowledge. I've been coding for 20 years and never heard anyone say anything good about Oracle other than their free hosting tier _is free_. Better late than never I guess!
- znpy 1y agoOracle has been not profiting at all but has also been pretty much neutral on the use of the Javascript trademark. "Developer communities" tend to create issues out of thin air, and that I don't like. In this case I'm siding with Oracle.
- Drakim 1y ago> In this case I'm siding with Oracle. Only because you don't understand Trademarks. They are not copyrights. Trademarks exists to protect consumers, so they don't mix together companies and products that have too similar name or branding. So somebody can't release a product called iPhona for $600 in the hopes that somebody will overlook the typo and order it instead of an iPhone for $600. If a company is not offering a product based on a trademark, that trademark should actively be removed. Oracle is not using the JavaScript trademark.
- globular-toast 1y agoDon't anthropomorphise the lawnmower.
- SergeAx 1y agoOracle is a lawyer company[0]. Trademarks and patents are lawyers' weapons. You don't donate nuclear warheads to your enemies. [0] https://www.globalnerdy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/oracle-org-chart-manu-cornet.jpg https://www.globalnerdy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/oracl... (can't find original XKCD, sorry)