>I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too). Especially when you are far richer (like 100+ times richer) than the people you're asking for money.

I get the where you're coming from, but it's this exact attitude that ends up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.

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ImPostingOnHN 5 days ago | parent [-]

If the $200k were going towards such a geek, or towards maintaining code that everyone uses, that'd be better.

As it stands, the money is going to lawyers, who will argue over the right to utter the word "javascript" in a commercial context (rather than, say, "JS"). So zero coding or maintenance.

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lenkite 5 days ago | parent [-]

Programming Geeks cannot argue in court. Only lawyers can. So the money is going to the right place ?

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ImPostingOnHN 5 days ago | parent [-]

You're assuming that arguing in court over being allowed to use 1 specific word in a commercial context is a good thing to spend $200,000 on at all, which is quite an assumption, regardless of who does the arguing.

I agree with you that it'd be better if Deno took your suggestion, and spent the money on a Programming Geek, rather than being distracted from their core mission for trivial, semantic matters. The latter is how we actually end up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.

I mean, I'll be the first to admit that I've argued about a word on the internet before, but at no point did it ever cross my mind that I should spend $200,000 doing so.

	▲	freeopinion 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		You have just convinced me to stop using the word J8t. It is not worth even $1 to me to be able to use that word. If Oracle wants to claim ownership, that claim can just be added to the legacy of Oracle. It's a bit stupid to be legally forced to stop using the word, but such is the nature of any discussion involving Oracle. How about Deno put up $10,000 to sponsor a renaming contest? In honor of Deno, I propose VajaScript. err... Vajascript