I think the word "bytecode" brings more confusion than clarity at this point. What we need is not necessarily a super-optimized, human-unreadable binary format

I think the word "bytecode" brings more confusion than clarity at this point. What we need is not necessarily a super-optimized, human-unreadable binary format for distributing programs. We just need a format that's standard and portable, and with underlying semantics that are amenable to a fast enough implementation. JavaScript is such a format; the fact that it's a programming language with C-ish syntax, rather than a binary bytecode format, is irrelevant at worst.