Trademark violation: Fake Notepad++ for Mac | Hacker News Reader

Trademark violation: Fake Notepad++ for Mac

notepad-plus-plus.org

634 pointsmaxloh306 comments

The latest issue comment from Don Ho is lookin' fiery! I love me some open source drama...

https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issue...

    > Every day that website remains active, you are in further violation of the law. I cannot authorize a "week or two" of continued trademark infringement.
    > Please take down the domain immediately so you can focus on your rebranding efforts without legal interference. If the site is not removed, I will have no choice but to escalate the takedown request.

I wonder if this counts as sufficient defense of the trademark according to the trademark protection laws: if one does not guard a trademark, they run the risk of losing it.

Unfortunately, if you care about trademark or just simple copyright infringement (I haven't checked what license is Notepad++ under), they might need to enlist a lawyer sooner rather than later.

Notepad++ is not registered with the USPTO (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office). Searches around will turn up nothing in the U.S. database. The name is trademarked in France (via INPI, the French patent office), which is why the maintainer has been able to send cease-and-desist notices in recent cases (e.g., the unauthorized “Notepad++ for Mac” site).

In the U.S. its only covered by common-law trademark rights from long use, as there’s no federal registration.

You don't need a trademark registration to send a cease-and-desist... you can just send one.

There's clearly demand for notepad++ on Mac. Refusing to meet users where they are at with a simple port feels like squatting on a trademark. I find myself sympathetic to the Mac porter more than Don Ho.

How is he squatting the trademark when it’s actively being used? Not releasing a version for some platform doesn’t make it squatting in the slightest.

The port just can’t use the trademark. Call it something else.

That's not how any of this works. Trademarks aren't invalidated by someone not liking how you do business.

There's demand for Crystal Pepsi but you can't go make a new soft drink yourself and call it Crystal Pepsi. If you want to say you are Pepsi, you have to be the Pepsi.

What if my Crystal Pepsi is just pepsi mixed with crystals or pepsi made into a crystal? Then it's an accurate description of the product?

Pepsi does not want you corrupting their brand by mixing it with Something-Else and calling it Something-Else-Pepsi.

Accurate description is not at all what the legal issue is about.

Trademarks indicate provenance, they don't describe product characteristics.

the provenance is that it's pepsi mixed with crystals therefore crystal pepsi

just like pepsi bottle crate is a crate for bottles of pepsi

ACKSHUALLY, abandonment is a thing with marks, that's why companies spend money to keep them in minimal use to avoid that, or, like Pepsi, lobby to create "famous" marks.

Neither "Pepsi" nor "Notepad++" are abandoned.

Notepad "iteration mark" is probably "merely descriptive" anyway (= And did I say they were? I just said it was a thing when someone acted like they were rights in gross like other IP. But thanks for showing off how smart you are! Always love to meet fellow people on the Internet who studied and practiced trademark law like I'm sure you did.

Pepsi isn't abandoned but Crystal Pepsi was close to having been. Thanks though, I wasn't aware you could still buy Pepsi lol.

"Squatting on a trademark" makes no sense. You might as well say that I'm squatting on my name because I'm not allowing other people to sign contracts for me.

You can clone someone's project without pretending to be them. They literally put his bio up. Call it something else, put your own bio up.

> They literally put his bio up.

...crediting him as the author of the original, not the mac port.

without commenting on anything to do with trademarks, in what way is that even slightly pretending to be him? why would they put another, separate bio alongside as the person doing a mac port if they were intending to masquerade as the original author?

If the "author" of this port respected Don Ho enough to credit him in the contributors section of his project, then why didn't he respect Don Ho enough to ask first?

If the "author" of this port respected Don Ho enough to credit him in the contributors section of his project, why doesn't he respect Don Ho enough to comply with the request to take down the violations?

This conflict indicates that the respect was never there, and thus the motivation for the bio was probably credibility laundering.

He did ask first, but Don Ho did not respond.

(Which is his right and no permission to do anything)

Don writes,

> For context: I received an email from Andrey Letov on April 8, 2026, informing me that he had just ported Notepad++ to macOS, and ask for contact, without providing further info.

So no asking to use trademarks beforehand, and no asking Don if it's okay to include him on the contributor page for the violating software.

I don’t think they are trying to masquerade as the author so much as imply a positive association or endorsement.

If he were just squatting on a trademark this would be an open and shut case under US Trademark law.

The trademark is still in active use for Notepad++ though. That’s not squatting.

There is clearly a demand for sports cars being sold for under $10k, so it was ok for me to steal your car and sell it cheap

Call it notemac++, tell that its a fork of notepad++.

But you can trivially easily run Notepad++ on Mac using Wine. It works flawlessly. Nobody is keeping anything from anybody.

There is a demand for the functionality, no need to use the name just to push the port.

That thread (not Don Hos post, but some of the other post) is so cringe, so many people making very dramatic assertions about how they know better than everyone else. It’s borderline “Star Wars is better than Star Trek and anyone else who says otherwise is an idiot and I have to get on the web and prove it” levels of cringe.

The timing of this is very funny for me, personally. After the Claude Code Rust re-implementation, I wanted to see how far I could push 'spec-driven development' by re-implementing Notepad++ for Linux. I used four agentic loops to draft detailed from the source, implement the code, write tests to fix regressions, and compare the result with the original source. I then re-themed it and actually came out pretty well.

I initially worried that a brand new name (I went with nootpad) might misleadingly suggest the project was built from scratch rather than being a semi-clean-room re-implementation. Then, I saw that NPP was trademarked and my worries flipped the other direction; the reason I haven't yet published it was because I'm still removing all the NPP references from the source + comments in an abundance of caution, leaving a huge disclaimer/attribution in the README. I know that OSS is an opinionated place and didn't want to step on any toes.

I must say, having all of that anxiety and seeing this guy literally put Don Ho's picture on the website and say that it was being re-named "in collaboration with" Don Ho (i.e. not in response to a legal threat) made me laugh out loud.

NixPad++

But don't block on the name, you could release it under NejneobhospodařovávatelnějšíPad++ and people will download.

It'll be easy search & replace later once you settle on a name

If you make it run stable, please do publish it at earliest opportunity.

(I volunteer for testing)

I guess now is also the time to ask Don Ho if he is ok with it the way it is. I guess he says yes. He did not take issue with the source of "notepad++ for mac" but with the branding. That people think he is behind. Nootpad is distinctive enough from notepad++, if at all I would worry about microsoft taking issue.

"nootpad" is already a very dissimilar name and I wouldn't expect that to draw any ire from anyone. Trademarks aren't absolute in their breadth.

"Notepad++ For Linux" would probably piss some folks off, though. ;)

If in doubt, always ask for clarity. And then -- if/when clarity is provided -- simply proceed accordingly.

100%. I think I hadn't fully internalized the open source vs trademark ethe (TIL that's the disputed plural of ethos) in my head. I had two nightmare scenarios: the first was where people would say "you copied Notepad++ and didn't give enough attribution, you're a thief!" and the other where...what happened here happened.

I think this was just about as close as I could get to asking Don Ho directly how he would prefer a port to be handled without actually doing so. I plan on publishing it shortly after cleaning up some God objects :)

Call it Nopepad++

okay, but wouldn't the best solution be to simply release an official macOS port? nowadays it would be cheaper than paying a lawyer to write a letter haha

Good lord, why are users of free software always act so entitled towards developers they have paid not a single cent to?

Just "simply" port your native GUI application to a completely different platform and make sure everything works as intended. No biggie! At least donate a couple hundred dollars to the developer so he can afford to run a couple of Claudes before you start asking for things.

He might not have a Mac to test it on or care to code it. It’s open source, they work on what they want after all they don’t get paid. If he was donated a Mac and enough money in sure he might look into it

It's not just that, Notepad++ is built around Win32 APIs and is designed for Windows. He's got some non-portable optimizations baked in. At its core, Notepad++ is just another Scintilla wrapper (like SciTE or Textadept) but it's targeted at and optimized for Windows. There will not be a Mac or Linux port.

If you want an editor with the same core as Notepad++, but fewer batteries included and more extensibility, Textadept is worth a look.

I use Notepad++ on WINE and it works very well, doubtless it could be done on macOS too.

why though it is open source the only problem the original dev has is that they are using his name and trademark they could name it something else and it will be okay.

If they'd named it something else, it would indeed be OK. We wouldn't be here having this conversation if that were a thing that had happened.

When there are no trademark issues then there are no trademark issues to discuss.

But they haven't named it something else, so here we are talking about the trademark issues that this raises.

Surely, this is a troll reply, but it made me think about this Lord of Rings meme/quote:

    > One does not simply walk into Mordor

i don't know, we're having this conversation because a superfan of notepad++ vibecoded his way into a macOS port. there's a lot of demand for it seemingly.

as for the other commenters, i agree that all kinds of curmudgeon behavior from open source maintainers is valid. many personalities are valid. but it doesn't mean writing legal letters is a good idea, it's winning the battle to lose the war.

But by doing that he would need to maintain more code, which is unreasonable if it isn't something he wants.

And someone using the Notepad++ brand without his consent isn't cool, as if something goes wrong, people might assume that the original Notepad++ author is behind it, tarnishing his reputation.

If he doesn't want to make a macOS version that's on him, other people can fork it and make their own versions if they want, just make it obvious it's not from the original dev.

Using the trademark is one thing. The authors brazen reaction another: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issue...

This reaction is normal, aletik could have been the next Jia Tan, for all we know, and could have distributed "fake notepad++ for Mac" binaries with backdoors in them to thousand of Mac users who think it is an officially n++-endorsed project when it is not, created by someone who is unknown.

Aletik can fork n++ and find a name for it, but can't use the brand and logo, and should be stopped by all means necessary if he does not comply ASAP. Tech bloggers should know better than to promote this without checking.

> Tech bloggers should know better than to promote this without checking.

Agreed, and it also seems unlikely this will be their takeaway. They now get to report on the drama which will probably get more clicks.

"The author" in above comment refers to the author of the port. So, yes, thats what they meant.

>Tech bloggers should know better than to promote this without checking.

Tech bloggers are just LLMs these days

Those very bad takes to push to merge a completely new codebase into Notepad++ project very much seems like a Jia Tan event. However, it’s probably not, because how bad they are. Nobody will be convinced with something like this, ever. One for sure, they don’t seem organic at all. They look like exactly how controlled political discourses are. Either there is a hit piece somewhere, or the comments are not genuine at all.

If you compiled notepad++ for Mac how should you make it available on the internet so people with Macs can download notepad++? Don't tell me you have to call it something else because that's absolutely insane, even if the law agrees.

The issue is by calling it Notepad++, you're now confusing users into thinking it's officially endorsed. Which means complaints, feature requests, bugs, and even any backdoors/malware included in the unofficial version tarnishes the reputation of the official product.

This is why trademarks exist.

So what should you do? Just call it My Awesome Notepad and expect users who are searching for Notepad++ to somehow find it? A name like "John's Notepad++ for Mac" would seem reasonable to me but still isn't compliant with trademark law.

An example give by donho is "SomeProject : a macOS port of Notepad++" so it seems like the name can be used which will make it appear in searches. It just has to be clearly something else.

I think that's still trademark infringement.

You can tell people what something is, that is nominative use of the trademark. Actually putting it in center of the branding might be infringing, but Don Ho gave their blessing to use that, so that point is moot anyways.

> So what should you do? Just call it My Awesome Notepad and expect users who are searching for Notepad++ to somehow find it?

Yes. Exactly that. You have no entitlement to free publicity based of someone else's hard work growing their own brand.

You could arguably say "Awesome Notepad, a Notepad++ fork" but even here, the trademark holders can demand you to remove the references to their product if they wished. In this specific instance, Given Notepad++ is open source, I suspect the maintainers of Notepad++ might have been okay with this approach. Though it's a little late for that now because the Mac port author has burned any good faith they might have had.

Another option is to gain trust with the Notepad++ maintainers and then request they link to "Awesome Notepad" project site as an endorsed 3rd party port. But again, the Mac port author hasn't taken the right approach to gain any trust there.

So as it stands, "Notepad++ Mac" is intentionally using Notepad++'s trademarks and branding as a way to get publicity quickly. I don't think they're doing it maliciously, but the intent is still dishonest.

Can you really demand someone not have any references to your product? Surely people are allowed to refer to it to explain their fork's relation to the original, otherwise it would also be illegal to compare your product against competitors in advertising or to review anything

I guess it depends on whether it's likely to confuse people?

As we speak, the Mac version's website is peppered with statements like:

> Is Notepad++ available for Mac?

> Yes. Notepad++ is now natively available for macOS as a free download.

That's over the line. This isn't a few tweaks to get it to compile on a Mac, but a wholesale rewrites of big chunks of it. It's a fork of Notepad++, but it's not the Notepad++.

I was replying to the hypothetical situation in the comment of saying "Awesome Notepad, a Notepad++ fork"

Gotcha.

If it’s part of the branding, then yes.

Saying “Awesome Notepad, a Notepad++ fork” as the tagline for a product would then be using Notepad++’s trademark for Awesome Notepads branding.

If it’s just mentioned in the documents then it because a question for the courts to decide if that’s sufficient use in advertising material. And what will likely usually happen is an undisclosed settlement.

But a lot of this depends on how it’s used, how litigious the trademark holder is, and what jurisdiction this is happening in.

This is where trademark law starts to get a little murky and the law will differ from country to country.

Does it?

Yes. For example: https://claimistry.com/trademark-law-differences-across-coun...

> If you compiled notepad++ for Mac

That's not what happened:

- there's a lot of UI code, so it's not a mere distribution for Mac, not even sure it qualifies as a port at this point

- also, the authors page states Letov as the first author

It's in fact a fork. And unless the original author is ok with that, you shouldn't advertise your fork under the original name.

The disclaimer he put up on the website is comical. "In coordination with [original author], I will be _evolving the brand_ to …"

I honestly chuckled reading this “in coordination” comment.

Imagine being slapped across the face, and instead of saying you were slapped, you say…”in coordination with the back of their left hand”.

This entire thread actually makes me so angry for the N++ team. He was being so kind in his wording and was clearly being taken advantage of.

“I’m in NYC you have my WhatsApp” wtf does that even mean…you eat chopped cheese and have a cell phone?

A charitable interpretation is that the author is very young, by my estimate of how they write and their confusion of how accountability works it’s probably a middle-schooled kid first dipping their toes into software.

> it’s probably a middle-schooled kid first dipping their toes into software.

They've got a fake LinkedIn profile (that's 9 years old) if that's the case showing professional experience, and are using someone else's image on it and their GitHub profile and personal site.

https://aletik.me/

More likely, the guy is just a clown.

The GH contributions heatmap on the about page that's entirely blank before April is either peak performance art in the agentic world, or he graduated top of class from clown school.

The way they’re acting is par for how a lot of adults view the world. Disregarding intellectual property rights is some people’s entire personality on the internet. Piracy and ignoring IP law have been glorified for years as being an anti-corporate rebellion, but the anti-corporate message has been lost by many who believe that IP rights and trademark shouldn’t exist at all. Even when the targets are anything but corporate.

Smells like AI slop past its expiration date, to be honest.

Given the way the guy who "ported" Notepad++ to macOS is behaving, it's hard to think of any actual altruistic reasons to do any of this. If Don Ho wanted to port Notepad++ to macOS with LLMs, he could have just as easily done it himself and arguably achieved a superior result.

This whole endeavour on aletik's part seems like vanity at best and probably just a malware vector down the line regardless.

> malware vector down the line

My concern is the ones that didn't get caught and are waiting to pull a Jia Tan.

Maybe this is some weird attempt to see if malicious takeover with bots is possible

To me he sounds inexperienced/naive and a little scared (and thus “defensive”) but well-intentioned. His response makes me believe that he didn’t do it for fame, to deceive, or other selfish reasons.

He was told by the original author to not use the name for his project 5 days ago. 3 days ago he wrote "Guys, all I wanted to do is to make Notepad++ available on mac and keep it open and free. I'm talking to Don. I really hope he will be ok with the name. It actually expands notepad++ brand to mac."

Already ignoring the authors wishes. He said clearly it is not OK and wants the name changed. That's it - but he keeps ignoring it.

I fail to see good intentions here.

Yeah. And if you want to expand an existing brand that's not yours, you ask first, and only continue after a green light from the owner.

Well, that part might be temporarily excused by naivety. But he did ask, was not replied to - and he did it anyway. So I actually do not believe in naivety. And now it is past that point anyway.

You mean asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission is not a valid way to walk through life?

In general really no, but I do see the point in not asking for permission for everything to get anything done. (I am german, here the saying is, anything not explicitely allowed is forbidden and there is no fun in this)

But I hate the stance when people do it, when it is clear that no permission will be given. To establish facts on the ground so to say.

(But there are exceptions where I think it is legit)

Judging by the fork author's name, should've asked them in russian :-/

First step would be taking down the website, second step is an apology, third step is bringing back online with new branding and eventually a final word to thank them, share the link and say they remain open to criticism.

It's not rocket science. Pretty sure even his LLM would give that strategy and implement it without burning too many tokens.

More than inexperienced, either he really can't read a room or he knows very well what he is doing.

Right? Instead we get:

- Saying he's hoping Don allows it

- "I actually did nothing wrong"

- "I actually did nothing wrong" part 2

- "I actually did nothing wrong" part 3

- Why are you so mad? Give me a week

- Why are you so mad? I added more lies to the website

- Why are you so mad? I'm working on it

... over the course of 2 days. Shutting down the website and pulling the app offline should have taken minutes.

People react differently to feedback without necessarily bad intentions. Not everyone is ready to instantly admit mistakes. Empathy goes a long way.

Reading the above, how much empathy does someone need to give before they can feel the other party has bad intentions?

"No" needs to mean something.

It’s not either-or. You can tell people No and be empathetic to their reasons at the same time. Understanding doesn’t mean agreement or acceptance. It also doesn’t mean you excuse their behavior, or allow it to continue. Empathy doesn’t mean you like what they’re doing. That would be sympathy.

In fact, understanding makes it easier to get people to do what you want.

Some argue that it is even a precondition, to meet someone where they are, to get them to change their ways. The other remaining option is violence/force, which will not fundamentally change their behavior but only shift the problematic behavior elsewhere (and often make it worse).

> It’s not either-or. You can tell people No and be empathetic to their reasons at the same time. Understanding doesn’t mean agreement or acceptance. It also doesn’t mean you excuse their behavior, or allow it to continue. Empathy doesn’t mean you like what they’re doing. That would be sympathy.

We're talking about a discussion in which the author continues their violations after being told "no", and excuses it with their "reasons".

Their reasons can come after they stop the actual wrongdoing, and maybe after they understand what they did wrong and apologize for it.

We all agree that that would be tactful. But, human empathy is neither an act of excusing the subject of the empathy, nor limited to tactful subjects.

Asking someone to empathize with their persecutor while they are actively harming that someone is generally viewed as abusive gaslighting in most other contexts.

Would you ask physical abuse victims to be empathetic towards their abusers in the middle of a beating, too? What if they were told it hurt, and asked to stop, and they instead continued anyways while repeatedly and politely saying they had good intentions in beating the victim?

If someone was being physically abused, I'd like to think that I'd try to step in. What value do you see in this comparison?

Gaslighting in its original sense is a continued process of abuse that leads to a person doubting their own perception, typically with a long term PTSD as consequence. What we are discussing here are possible strategies to get somebody to change their behavior. If you consider people stating a different opinion than you to be gaslighting you, you might want to dig deeper.

I think what is happening here is a difference in understanding of what we mean by empathy, and what it entails in terms of visible action or response. I tried to make it clear that to me, you can both be understanding of the feelings and the (ir)rationality of an abuser and be clear in your boundary-setting (and possible application of protective force) at the same time. The understanding of your “opponent” can help guide your interaction, whether it is verbal communication or other. It doesn’t mean “to be nice” in your response, or accepting their actions.

The reason why I advocate for “more empathy” is because I firmly believe it can make you more successful in clear boundary setting and in communicating and achieving your goals, not weaker, especially in situations where you strongly disagree with somebody else’s actions.

To come back to the case at hand: We seem to agree that the goal is to get him to stop and take the project down. The strategies employed so far to tell him No didn’t make him stop. Now what? I suggested to try a little empathy in the response, something along the lines of “Thank you for offering your help in making NP++ even more successful! We appreciate your effort. For now, can you please take it down, and then we can discuss how you can bring your strengths and abilities to the project in a way that causes less controversy in our happy little community? Looking forward to hearing about your ideas!”. (Only works if sufficiently true; adjust where necessary.)

The goal remains the same. Only the strategy is different. It doesn’t matter if I “like” the person or not, or if I “care” about them. I am interested in achieving my goals, and it requires their cooperation for that —- unless I want to sue. Which I don’t.

With your hypothetical domestic violence abuser, you can shout No all you want at some people and they just won’t stop. If your goal is to get them to stop, you CAN try different strategies. Empathy expands your range of possible actions; it doesn’t limit them.

altek has been given a number of off-ramps and alternatives to proceed. His continued resistance to take those isn't a sign of naivete, it's a sign of bad faith.

I don't believe that he is naive. It looks like he wants to use the Notepad++ brand authority to capture the notepad++ macos market (which is big!) Thus he is infringing on a trademark for his own benefit.

> capture the notepad++ macos market

Is it big?

Notepad++ is big in the Windows world but I am not certain that it is automatically big on Mac. They have much more Mac-native feeling editors like TextMate, Nova, Cot, even SublimeText feels more macOS-ishy than Notepad++

I am on Linux, Notepad++ is not a name of concern on here at all and if it ever came to Linux most people wouldn't notice.

If you're in the Windows world that might seem like an improbability given how big it is there, but trust me, it's not a well known name anywhere else.

"I am on Linux, Notepad++ is not a name of concern on here at all and if it ever came to Linux most people wouldn't notice."

Strong disagree. The thing I miss in linux most is notepad++ or something as capable and usable (open for suggestions, but chances are I already tried them)

> I miss

There's the rub, I miss. Notepad++ is thoroughly a Windows app. Linux and Mac natives have no appetite for one of the most thoroughly Windows-ass Windows app around. Switchers, sure. But take me as an example. I've been on a Mac since 2007. At this point I'm a native. I'm not even aware of what Notepad++ really does.

Well, I am a "switcher" since 20 years, so rather OS agnostic. I regulaty switch between linux and windows (and chromeos) and sometimes mac and ideally I want all my apps to work the same, no matter the OS.

Notepadqq is a decent crack at a Notepad++ clone for Linux, but it is no longer actively maintained.

Thanks, I did not try out that one, though it being abandoned is of course not great.

Interesting. I'd have thought that Linux users would go traditional (vi vs. Emacs) or for something heavier (vscode), or quick and easy for when you just need $EDITOR (nano).

For some reasons I never liked vi nor emacs, vscode is indeed too heavy and nano too awkward. I use mostly xed, but it lacks compared to notepad++

Any pointers on what exactly you miss compared to Linux alternatives like Kate, Sublime, VSCode, etc? (Assuming you already tried them)

Sublime I like, but is proprietary (and there was something else). VScode is too heavy, kate as well. (But maybe with kate I just need to modify the key bindings so they match what I am used to, I only recently tried it out)

Basically, I want code folding(with option to collapse all the tree), macrorecording, search (replace) in files, but with all the goodies notepadd++ provides, where I can easily set the folder to search, what filepatterns to exclude etc.

Zed?

Always vim, never really understood why people use anything else for a dumb ide.

Ok, I might give it a try again. Funny thing: I googled "vim" and google replied with: "did you mean emacs?"

I have been using NotepadNext. Works fine.

I thought actual n++ worked well in WINE?

Not the last times I tried it, but it has been a while (but I did also recently read about problems .. and I need a text editor to work without problems)

It’s probably a few thousand users. When I switched to mac, I looked for notepad++ and settled on BBEdit (which is awesome and funny I forgot about it all these years).

This doesn’t seem like for money, but for esteem.

A shout out for BBEdit which is a 34 year old Mac native text editor that maintains a freemium license (and the free version is still quite featureful).

It doesn’t suck.®

I've maintained my copy of it from back in the MacOS 7.x days.

A malicious actor would be happy to be publicly labeled inexperienced/naive.

The inverse Hanlon's razor cuts much better than the original one these days:

Never attribute to stupidity (incompetence|naivety) that which is adequately explained by malice.

You don't need an inverse Hanlon's razor, that's the natural response and a recipe for a social dumpster fire.

That reasoning holds but it is not based on any of the facts at hand. There's a reason why any community worth being apart of has a tendency to assume good faith. People make mistakes. I respect Don Ho's response and I don't see how the pitchfork brigade is bringing anything valuable to the situation.

People are pissed because instead of taking the feedback, apologizing and acting immediately, he wrote comment after comment giving excuses. What he did is literally illegal, and ignorance or good intentions is not a solid excuse.

If you’d actually installed it and realized afterward that you’d been misled, whether by someone who doesn’t understand trademarks or someone acting in bad faith, you’d probably feel differently. Leaving a comment on HN in that situation is a pretty reasonable reaction.

This. A billion times this. The community should be shouting from the rooftops that there is an intruder in the neighborhood.

Maybe there's no malice intended and this is just a colossal pile of honest mistakes. Maybe this author is as clueless as he appears. Maybe, but until he appears at the United Nations and doxes himself before embarking on a world wide apology tour, nobody in their right mind should install that binary. I wouldn't even run the build script in a sandbox.

I don't wanna be rude but it looks like this guy just arrived on the Internet this year - around March-April and it doesn't seem like he has any prior activity. He just decided to roll this Notepad++ for macOS and that's it

Also, his medium avatar looks awfully generated.

Does he remind you of anyone?

https://www.wired.com/story/jia-tan-xz-backdoor/

It reads to me like English isn't his first language. Either way the complexities of open source licensing are something a lot of people don't understand.

As stated multiple times in the linked discussion: the licensing of the open source code is not the issue. It's the use of the trademark, and making their fork look like an officially endorsed one.

And the fork author was given a oppertunity to remediate without further drama. Instead, the fork author doubled down, where the possible reasons for that behavior are hard to interpret in good faith.

Yes, one of the complexities of open source licensing that people do not understand is that most copyright licenses assign only copyright and that copyright is a distinct and different concept than patents and trademarks.

Ironic this comment reads like you didn’t even grok the basics of the issue if you think open source licensing is the source of confusion.

> Also, his medium avatar looks awfully generated.

What do you mean by this? Aren’t most avatar images generated three days?

His linkedin (on which he posted about notepad++) is pretty light publicly but it does have a post about him speaking at a conference in NY on product management and people actually commenting that they saw his talk. That was a year ago, so definitely possible that there's some "setup an account to look real" BS going on but at first glance my take is that he's a real person.

The people on HN might be surprised by how little the average naive software-adjacent person knows about intellectual property law. I've been following it since I was 12, but most people barely know what a trademark is let alone what enforcement looks like.

Here's my guess: Eastern European origin, currently working and likely living in NY, PM gets ahold of Claude and decides to vibe code himself a port of Notepad++. Maybe he really has good intentions, maybe he is looking to make donation money, maybe a bit of both, whatever. Probably looking for donation money. Regardless, he thinks "Oh people fork/port open source projects all the time, I'll just do that" and has no conception whatsoever that he is going to piss people off OR that he's violating the law. English is not his first language either I'd bet, and he's using Claude to write a lot of / all of his comments. Acts frankly ignorant and confused and dumb in response, doesn't know what to do, etc. AI can't help him because he's not even givin the AI context well. A shitstorm ensues.

FWIW, I did a quick/not that advanced static analysis of the code compared to the published binaries and couldn't find anything malicious. I'd leave that to the experts though for any real opinion.

TLDR;; My guess: Dumb PM gone mad with power and looking for a donation-based cash grab, possibly with the good intention of keeping the project going long term, does not know the first thing about IP and does not speak english as his first language. But an actual dude.

We'll see how it shakes out.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy that (and on a quick incomplete read, the author is betting on getting exactly that sort of pass)? It's one thing to plumb the depths of interpretations of the GPL or do a detailed compare and contrast of one license versus another (agreed: nontrivial), but "hey yo! Ima gonna use the name and branding of someone elses very, very popular project and try and make some cash from it that'd be cool right?". No...sorry...I cannot suspend my disbelief to that extent.

Naive my ass.

From the fork's authors page

> Andrey Letov is a New York product leader and software engineer.

And then a long list of professional achievements follows.

He knows exactly what he's doing

Product manager in software for 10 years. I cannot believe the inexperienced defense.

> I've shipped fintech and risk products at Moody's, BNY, AxiomSL, Amex and many more. I've built platforms, designed user experiences, assembled portfolio analytics and worked on professional services teams.

No inexperience here. It is malice

thats a lot of companies for a guy so young. Probably gets the boot a bunch.

To me it seems like a "idgaf" mentality, and trying to get as much and push as far as he can. Never in his replies he shows any sign of admitting that he should not have put the notepad++ name like this, that it looked like an actual endorsement and this was wrong. He just finally (after putting repeated pressure) accepts to change the branding. I don't understand why some people like him do that and how.

I assume it is the "fake it till you make it" mentality, like "fake the endorsement until they actually endorse your project". Clearly doesn't work like this, but if this mentality has gotten you far, why not try it here too?

You can be inexperienced and naive, and at the same time understand when you make a mistake. Being "inexperienced" because you actively refuse to learn from what people tell you that you do wrong is not inexperience anymore.

What LLMs have brought to our industry is exposure of how many people in it are total pieces of shit. You have the hucksters who are out there trying to get you to invest in their LLM startup and they constantly use language that is functionally lying about what their product is by likening what it does to actual functioning human brains and personalities. You have the fantasists who see a grammatically correct sentence as proof of omnipotence and then run around telling everyone how AI has totally changed everything. You have the posers who use LLMs to cut-n-paste code from other's repos, directly and indirectly, and then claim they wrote it and pretend to have skills and abilities they don't have. Then you have the ignoramuses in media and such who know nothing, they hear all the hucksters and fantasists jibber-jabbing and proceed to flood the world with untrue stories about AI and it's affects on society.

The smarmy dishonesty about "expanding the Notepad++ brand" actually is selfish and ill-intentioned. Perhaps he is too young and naive to fully understand that he is being parasitic. But naivety is a well-travelled path towards malice.

Regardless, he absolutely deserves to be shamed on GitHub for this. I don't like the online culture of public shame and sandbagging - I think this GitHub thread should be closed now that it's viral - but sometimes people actually do things they should be ashamed of. This needs to be a tough lesson.

I'm spamming this everywhere - taken from his blog:

Also' he's not young. Check his github avatar

You know, what's frustrating is that when I first contemptuously dismissed "Notepad++ for MacOS" as a trademark violation I did skim that stuff and accordingly just sort of assumed the port was technically legitimate, but disrespectful of copyright. But of course it was vibe-coded, and apparently chock full of stupid bugs that would have been caught with adequate manual testing. Why wouldn't I assume otherwise?

This from his website is pretty funny:

  These days I'm deep in multi-agent AI and honestly it's changed everything. I build with both hands, one on the code, one on the vision. I can finally bring to life ideas I've been carrying around for years that always needed too many people and too many quarters.

The first well-known software he vibe-coded is a buggy port of something a talented human spent many decades hand-crafting. The slop project is completely devoid of creativity or imagination, and it's going down in public flames because he was stupid about copyright. Kind of cartoonish, actually.

The sad thing is that I expect this to rise as time passes. Most vibe-coders, from what I've seen, are exactly like this guy: they have no idea of trademark or copyright law and think that they can just... Do things like this without consequences. They will self-justify until they're blue in the face and not learn anything from it. There are, of course, exceptions to this generalization, but I don't know how significant said exceptions really are going to be to this.

It sounds like BS. Guy’s done it all if you believe his resume.

That's kinda the point. No matter if it's true or not, it puts him in bad light

All of his responses are moronic misreadings of NP++'s actual author's comments, which lead me to believe that he is acting entirely in bad faith.

> His response makes me believe …

I’d pay more attention to his behavior.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions

    > The authors brazen reaction another

I want to clarify. Are you implying that Don Ho (donho) or Andrey Letov (aletik) is having the "brazen reaction"? From your link, I found aletik's first comment here: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issue...

When I first read about the MacOS port from HN, I also assumed it was blessed by Don Ho. I was fooled by the new website. Now that I know it was not coordinated, it looks weird (even creepy/uncanny valley'ish) in hindsight, especially using all the same icons and branding, and including Don Ho on the author page.

The brazen part is Andrey Letov pretending to not understand.

In case anyone else was confused. The author of this fork replied to some trademark discussion with a “fuck trademarks” response. He edited/deleted it but you can still see it in some of the quoted replies.

Fork author is either a young kid or clueless.

The only place I see that is from a user "LiEnby" not "aletik", and none of aletik's existing messages are edited. All replies I see with the message are also to LiEnby. I don't agree with aletik's slow response in any way, but I don't think your claim is correct either. Do you have anything to prove that this was said by aletik?

If that’s the case good catch. I had the whole conversation unhidden and it was riddled with odd quotes. My bad for the misrepresentation. My conclusion still holds, fork author is a fool and is playing the slow game for no reason.

All good, and agreed the fork author is in the wrong here. I just like keeping the facts straight since that can inform better arguments and discussions.

It was not him as far as I can tell. It was this guy: https://github.com/nukeop that showed examples of the trademark law being stupid sometimes, and this guy: https://github.com/LiEnby that said "fuck trademarks"

The author of the "rewrite" didn't seem to say this

Or a tech founder (gestures at Ubercab)

AI means never having to ask permission. Or forgiveness, it seems.

See all you do is take the repo and put it into the AI and then ask the AI to regenerate it to another directory. Et Voila the AI generated it and the person didn't do anything illegal.

Okay that might not be okay. So you take screen shots, release notes and feed that to the AI. Now it's fine.

Even better is if you can get the data trained into the model! Because then it's totally different right?

1 shotting companies is the future and that's why so many companies are accelerating ai by giving all their code and plans to the leading ai providers for money.

Asking? Inessential!

That response doesn't seem brazen. It sounds like they had a deeply mistaken understanding of what an open source license grants and believed it would be fine to use the name and branding as well as the code. Unless I missed it, it sounds like they are changing how their site communicates its relationship to the original source.

What I find baffling about that conversation are the people having their LLMs weigh in on what the author should have done. Verbal takedown by LLM is a new level of cringe.

Edit: There are some replies I hadn't seen, their confusion and request for patience sounds like they still don't fully appreciate their mistake.

It sounds brazen and incredibly entitled. The LLM response seems fitting for a vibe coded project with a vibe brain author.

I am on the fence about using an LLM to respond to situations like this, particularly if it is a screenshot and it is obvious what they are doing.

It is snarky and cringe, but also goes to show how poorly the decision making is by the author that even an LLM is pointing out how badly you are handling this.

Especially when this is clearly a vibe coded project.

What's amazing to me is how I was downvoted into oblivion on a few different subreddits and forums for expressing concern about the vibe-coded nature of the project and that the author of the Mac port appeared to be using the Notepad++ name/branding without any official blessing from the project.

There's a lot of people even in here who don't seem to get it, who call it a "simple" task to do the port and are confused why this is a bad thing at all. A lot of people in the industry (and perhaps everywhere) have a hard time with ethics and doing the right thing.

> I wanted is to bring Notepad++ to mac and allow people to find Mac version of Notepad++ quickly and use it.

Seems he’s ignorant of the ecosystem too (or possibly disingenuous, or maybe doesn’t realise he’s done something wrong or why). Notepad++ runs perfectly on macOS under Wine. I’ve been using it that way for two or three years now. Wasn’t a struggle to set up either: I simply ran the installer as if I was running Windows and then it #justworked.

Indeed, and in general. Popular, well supported open source project around for decades not available in POSIX, somehow?

In Linux, the only things I don't have with Wine are whatever the other clipboard is that highlighting text gets filled with and access to network shares. Such nothingburgers that I've never spent real time to figure out if there's a solution.

I've never managed to get MS Office running successfully on Wine, at least not any recent version of it anyway. That might work fine on Linux but it doesn't get past the first handful of pages of the installer on macOS.

It's not the end of the world, but the Windows version of Excel is streets ahead of the macOS version, which is why I was keen to make it work.

Otherwise, everything I really care about from Windows - the odd utility, along with retro computing emulators - seems to run fine on Wine. I haven't got into more modern games so can't speak to how well they tend to run.

MS Office is not an open source project.

When someone has an issue getting something like Notepad++ running with Wine, they have the option to inform the Notepad++ project or if they possess the skills, submit a change so that Notepad++ will run smoothly on Wine. Or, inform Wine and they may figure out how to fix the issue within Wine.

I haven't bothered getting Office running on Linux in a very long time. The only thing I miss is a convenient way to print envelopes, as LibreOffice is incapable of doing this. However, I mail far less than I used to so I just hand write the addresses.

I think the only real way to run Office is on Windows in VirtualBox, which I still haven't had any need to bother with.

> I think the only real way to run Office is on Windows in VirtualBox

I think you’re right, but I just don’t want to run full Windows because it’s such a resource hog. It’s always chewing CPU for some background task or other, and so it drains the battery noticeably quicker.

I have the Mac version of Office, which is fine for most things, and LibreOffice fills the gap for a small handful of non-Excel tasks, but I do love Windows Excel for more complex spreadsheet tasks.

"I will give you one week to change the name."

"No, I'm not going to do that."

"Okay fine, I'll report you to Cloudflare now."

"BROOOOOOOO you said you'd give me a week?!?!"

It looks like it went more like this:

"Stop using my trademark." [1]

"OK, give me a couple of weeks. I was intending to expand your brand." [2]

"No. I've reported this to your CDN." [3]

---

[1]: This is the correct way to handle things.

[2]: This has the appearance of being evidence of -deliberate- fuckery.

[3]: This kind of action is the inevitable result of deliberate fuckery.

We have found the limits of agentic engineering. Changing a logo on a website apparently takes weeks.

Funny how the vibe-coding speed grinds to 0 the moment people catch on to their bullshit. A name change requires a week but shitting out 200 commits with Claude takes barely a month.

This comment really put it into perspective to me. I wouldn't have phrased it better myself

Yoink, I'm stealing this quote!

Oh what the hell. This is the vibe coder mentality. Grift, as far as it goes

I think there's a significant chance this fake Notepad++ for Mac is/becomes a vector for malware.

The author is impossibly naive. The best interpretation is they are easy dupes for a supply-chain attack.

Hopefully the word gets around that no one should install this (whether or not the author of the fake version eventually finishes "evolving the branding" of the port).

Too bad MacRumors didn't bother doing more than adding a note to where they recommended this fake copy: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/29/notepad-plus-plus-edito...

They didn't even bother removing the links!

MacRumors has now just posted another post about the controversy: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/04/notepad-plus-plus-trade...

MacRumors repeated Letov's "in coordination with" bs.

There's no coordination.

Isn't notepad++ also a vector for malware? It would seem to be more of a violation of the trademark to not distribute malware

You're arguing the malware risk from notepad++ created and run by Don Ho for over 22 years is comparable to that of new, fake notepad++, vibe coded and run by a guy whose main claim to fame is a marked ignorance of norms around software development?

You'll have to let us know how you reached that conclusion.

Seriously your argument is this? Not even 3 months have passed since this [1] happened?

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/v889-released/

It's open source

https://github.com/nextpad-plus-plus/nextpad-plus-plus-macos

I inadvertently used someone else's trademark, once. They weren't really doing a good job of managing it, so it didn't show up in any of my searches (which did not include the USPTO, which didn't have a decent Web presence, back then).

They contacted me, after it had been up (a Website), and said I needed to stop using it immediately.

They were right. I was wrong. It came down in an hour, and I set up a new site, using a different name, in a day or so.

I offered to give them the domain name. They didn't want it, but that was fine. I stopped using (and paying for) it immediately.

Almost happened to me once, but instead of threatening legal action the company asked for a couple of features, sent me free hardware, and a next-gen board that made my software redundant.

I created a plugin for a niche markup language recently. I asked them if I could use their logo for it on GH, they said yes, I did and added a note to the licence file explaining that their unregistered trademark was used with permission.

It's not hard to do the right thing, either upfront or once you realize you'd done the wrong thing.

On another note, I was once contacted through Apple's infringement service, that the app I wrote, was infringing on someone else's.

The app started with the first four letters of their app name ("Ambi").

they were probably going after any app that started with those four letters, so they would rank higher in searches. Since they used Apple's service, they could probably have had my app taken down, even though there was no way that their claim had any merit.

In that case, I was planning on changing the app's name, anyway (it wasn't a very good name), but I could see this kind of thing being a huge PItA.

Hell Apple has given me problems for infringing on my own trademark- accidentally registered an app under the wrong developer account and tried to just delete and recreate under the correct one, took multiple rounds of review and having to file my own trademark complaint for them to allow me to use the name again. Great way to get stuck in App Store Hell

I have not done it, but I think there’s a way to transfer published apps.

I have, however, made the same mistake as you. I work under three different organizations, and can miss which one I have selected (also, Apple is constantly randomly changing the initial one I am logged into). In that case, it was just at the start of development, and I could easily change the bundle ID.

I have transferred published apps before, and was hoping to avoid bringing Apple into the loop to transfer my own app to myself or deal with the absolutely ancient interfaces still in place for that process since this app hadn't been published. Lesson learned the hard way, jump through the Apple hoops or get the stick.

With all this discussion about Notepad++ finally being ported to Mac, I thought I’d drop a link to a previous attempt at a “port” that I’d heard of.

Notepad Next: https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext

It’s a (still work in progress) cross platform re-implementation of Notepad++.

It also predates agentic coding, if that’s something that concerns you.

Just needs to update the site to make it clear it's an independent port of the project. Then, modify the name to MacPad++ or something. Good to go.

To be clear in the GitHub thread Don Ho repeatedly encouraged him to do this, and said it was cool that he was trying to bring Notepad++ to Mac! Just don't make it look like Don Ho and the rest of the team is responsible for any quality issues. Don't use the logo!

"Objective-Notepad" was right there.

> "Objective-Notepad" was right there.

It still is. There's only a handful of hits on Google for that, too.

You should do it. I'd do it if I had a Mac and used Notepad++ ;-)

Objective C is a nice language, it's a shame it only really caught on because apple bought next

TextEdit++ is a lot more fitting anyways.

By the name the domain has probably use another domain too

Related discussions:

"Notepad++ for Mac – Independent community port" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964 27-apr-2026 85 comments

"Notepad++ Code Editor Comes to Mac After 20-Year Wait" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947740 29-apr-2026 36 comments

Plenty of very thoughtful comments so far about copyright, community, developers who might not speak English as a first language, .... Very few people mentioning the obvious:

MALICIOUS BINARY!

Did we learn nothing from the xz malware fiasco? One update quietly pushed out at night while nobody's paying attention and boom.

The app has now posted a message indicating a rebranding:

> Starting with upcoming version 1.0.6, Notepad++ for Mac will be renamed to Nextpad++. The new name is a small nod to Mac history. Before returning to Apple in 1996, Steve Jobs founded NeXT, which became the foundation of what is now macOS.

Given the context of a) trademark infringement and b) framing it as a comeback story, this compliance seems to be malicious.

And not as clear as it could be:

> Is this the "real" Notepad++ for Mac?

> This is the actual Notepad++ codebase ported to run natively on macOS. It is not a knockoff, a Wine wrapper, or a new editor that imitates Notepad++.

Why not just say "No, this is not Notepad++ for Mac. It's my own port of the code from Notepad++." It still sounds like he's trying to pass it off as the actual Notepad++.

idk it clearly says ported and addresses that it’s not the original about 3x in the FAQ

Apparently he agreed with me because he's eliminated that question and wording, with no trace I can find of what I quoted. The other language is irrelevant to what I quoted.

(posting my comment from the other thread) Hilarious. How long does it take to vibecode the requests to change the logo and name. Vibecoding a port from scratch is super fast as long as you don't need permission huh. Then when the adults ask you to not infringe on copyright, it's all "please be patient guys. I am boy. Give me one week pls."

Trademark is the one form of IP I genuinely appreciate (minus anything involving the International Olympic Committee). If I buy something labeled as a Coke, I want some strong assurances that it was made by the Coca-Cola company, not a fan who wanted to bring Coke to new venues. If I were to buy a Dell laptop, first, shoot me because I’ve lost my mind. But if I did, then I want to know it’s made by Dell Corp and not someone collecting parts off Alibaba. Trademarks benefit their owners, but they also benefit the customers.

Which is all to say this story is wild. Sorry, author, this is not Notepad++, and saying otherwise is lying to the end users. Don Ho has a reputation to protect as the real author. This fork has nothing to protect; it could embed a code exporter to shop all your stuff to North Korea without costing its author any rep, because they weren’t starting with any to begin with. I don’t know Ho, I don’t use Windows, and I’ve never used Notepad++, but this lie is dangerous to Ho, and the people using his stuff because they trust his name.

It’s rare you see an IP argument where one side is clearly legally and ethically correct. This is our one for the year, I suspect.

I see a Russian name, I assume very cavalier approach to copyright and trademark laws, especially if it is about someone else's copyright or trademark. This heuristic has had enough nines for me to qualify as 100% accurate.

Source: having been in ex-USSR through all of 1990s and 2000s.

Trademark laws? Copyright? Private property? Comrade, you must have hit your head hard, now quick, get the shovel, we need to load the coal in another truck for the glory of the Soviet Union!

Original announcement and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964

> "It actually expands notepad++ brand to mac"

> "My intention was to expand your brand."

Funny he thinks 'expanding' someone else's 'brand' is doing them a favour.

'I inflated your currency! There's more now, you should appreciate!'

Visiting the referenced website (https://notepad-plus-plus-mac.org/), the first thing I see is a big, green Announcement that says:

  In coordination with Don Ho, the creator of the original Notepad++, I'll be evolving the branding of the macOS version so it stands on its own while respecting its lineage. These updates, such as a new logo, a refined name, and likely a new domain will ship with version 1.0.6 in the coming days. Continuity for existing users is a priority, and I'll make the transition as seamless as I can. Thank you for your patience.

Did Don Ho really coordinated with this author?! If no then why he lies and he knows he is lying? Where this path leads to?! Really weird times to be alive!!

coordination must mean, 'i've been threatened legally by'

FFS. I installed it after seeing it here on HN and on MacRumors. Terrible failure on my part but MacRumors should offer an apology for endorsing this fake release.

This is such a blow for MacRumors... I won't be taking them seriously anymore after this. They are complicit.

A website that's specialized into running unconfirmed rumors for clicks, shocking!

9to5mac writes clickbait headlines but MacRumors violates journalistic integrity. They always have been worse, there’s nothing new.

The National Enquirer publishing rumors and gossip?! I'll never read them again!

You can’t take MacRumors seriously in that sense in general, they often distort their sources and barely do any journalistic due diligence. They are serviceable as a news feed for the sources they link to, and for the rumored-upcoming-features summary listicles.

Me neither. So far all I see is a puny "[Updated]" title on the article with no apology or indication of what was updated.

An apology? That'd be... breaking news /s

First thing I do is check official notepad++ website. I didn't see anything, that what's stop me.

Smart. Good on you for noticing it wasn’t the real website.

Same with heise online, Germany's largest IT news site:

https://web.archive.org/web/20260430011533/https://www.heise...

I mean, the website is called "Rumors", so their reliability is in compliance with the letter of the contract :-)

Anyone from Moody's, BNY, AxiomSL, Amex. Who knew "Andrey Letov" and can contact him on his personal email/phone to verify?

Author of Mac notepad github repo claims he worked there, https://aletik.me/ (1 month old personal website), he also has new Github and new Linkedin. https://github.com/aletik

If someone has reverse image search platform, use his github profile picture. There is another Linkedin profile, with same guy, but slightly different picture.

I would not trust this "Notepad++ for Mac" at all. The author of the "port", aka Vibe Coded slop, Andrey Letov has absolutely zero commits anywhere before he suddenly vibes up this mac release. He brands it as an official Notepad++ version, is slimy in the way he interacts with the Notepad++ team etc. I would not be surprised if theres some sort of back door or malware attack vector embedded in this software. Stay away! Remember the XZ Utils backdoor!

Heck, even remember that state-level actors abused a flaw in NPP's update mechanism and hijacked NPP's hosting provider to deliver malware to specific targets: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-up...

There are a lot of NPP users out there, and probably the most important thing, given that they use it to edit all their files, is that they can trust the software. Some rando out of nowhere saying they've written "NPP for Mac" is red flag central.

So would you say that the Notepad++ author got Letov with a technicality?

This is so sloppy I really doubt this is an attempt at malware. It’s more likely the author is, uh, “socially unaware”.

The Mac port is open source, and has rebranded:

https://github.com/nextpad-plus-plus/nextpad-plus-plus-macos

The name was a trademark violation, but the project appears to be compliant with the open source license used by Notepad++.

I wish people wouldn't abuse the author of that project over this. Giving them the benefit of the doubt in that this was a mistake and not intentionally malicious, it feels really bad for hundreds if not thousands of people to send hate, insults, abuse to a single individual. Shame on the people who are doing that.

The only way you can consider this a mistake is by not having read the github comments here: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issue...

I think you need to do a little more research before you give the poor, poor little author of 'that project' a pass.

A similar thing happened for OTR recently. [1] Is the AI naming the vibe coded projects? Many of these are getting submitted to /newest

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47997919

FWIW it's feasible to make a "clone" of Notepad++ using the Scintilla library that Notepad++ is based on, but don't violate trademarks of course. That said, it's the details that make Notepad++ good.

The app seems to be entirely vibe-coded. ("multi-agent AI development workflows are what make a one-person project at this scale practical")

However the author says he will "move from the branding".

I hope he calls it something like Notepad+++

typically trademark names that can be mistaken for another trademark in the same category are not allowed.

Ironically, like "notepad". I always find it odd how infringers feel ownership and get defensive about their infringement. Like release groups getting pissy about people reposting/renaming their releases.

Windows Notepad isn't a standalone product, but a Windows feature that has its title localized into every language as part of Windows, none of which are registered as a trademark.

And should it be considered a commercial product, Notepad alone is too generic so the trademark would probably be Windows/Microsoft Notepad, just like products named Something-Office both predate and followed Microsoft Office.

I suspect we will not see a non-vibe-coded app again. I think such days are in the past now.

it's nothing new. young people are ambitious and internet has been "claimed" by "last gen".

I have a project with only ~600 stars. someone approached me want to contribute an adjacent project to be part of "official suite" and do rev share on my donation, and she already purchased a domain with a different TLD.

Fortunately, she agreed with my recommendation of using her brand and maintain her own donation jar, she still owns that domain but not using it so far.

Could've just called it MacPad++ or something

Is notepad++ a registered trademark?

yes https://data.inpi.fr/marques/FR5133202

So, it's a French trademark. Not a lawyer, but from what I remember trademarks need to be registered in every region you want to enforce them in separately.

If the author of "Notepad++ for Mac" doesn't happen to be French as well, is there anything (legally) preventing them from using this trademark?

You can enforce an unregistered trademark, but you need evidence that it’s actually yours. Registration makes that easier.

"Enforce" yes but the point is that this fork clearly violates broader principles and conventions around respecting clearly active trademarks. Nobody is demanding a lawsuit in French court or any particular legal consequences. But it is totally valid and reasonable for an international company like Cloudflare to crack down on hosting his website: they have French customers.

Also it's really not a finder's-keeper's thing with trademarks and international borders. If someone trademarked Notepad++ in the US and released some janky port with the Notepad++ name, Don Ho could likely still win in US court. Most reasonably knowledgeable US consumers who are plausibly in the market for a Windows text editor are at least superficially familiar with "Notepad++" as the name of a well-regarded software product. I know we travel in certain circles, but there is a reason this guy wants to use "Notepad++" and not "MacnotePlus - A fork of Notepad++ for MacOS." It's a famous name.

That's not correct. You don't have to register a trademark in order for it to be protected, it's just recommended because if you do register it you don't have to separately prove that you have built up brand reputation. That should be pretty easy for a project as old and well-known as this though.

You're correct.

In very, very broad US-centric* strokes: Using a mark in trade is enough to establish a defensible trademark.

Registering a trademark can be useful, but it is also optional. At very least, registration helps make the ownership of the mark easier to discover and this can help everyone start on the right foot.

(* I'm not familiar at all with the laws of France, but that's fine: The alleged violation happened in New York.)

> In very, very broad US-centric* strokes: Using a mark in trade is enough to establish a defensible trademark.

Isn't that only if it's something that would actually qualify for a trademark?

For example, "Car Shop" or probably even "Hamburgers USA" would not qualify for a trademark due to being overly generic/descriptive (in many jurisdictions).

Now in Notepad++'s case the inclusion of the ++ obviously means it would indeed qualify.

Just asking as I'm sure there's people around here with personal experience around the topic, though again it can differ quite a bit by country.

Lots of very plain-looking things work as trademarks. Some obvious examples: AAA, BBB, Target, Just Do It.

There's a lot of nuance in trademarks, including geographical nuance. It's possible for someone to open a small bakery in Boise, Idaho named Bread Stuff and not conflict at all with an existing local bakery named Bread Stuff that operates in Fresno, California.

Having different uses can count, too. Moe's Barber Shop can be a defensible trademark, but that doesn't necessarily conflict at all with Moe's Car Parts across town.

Except: There's also a concept of well-known trademarks, which supercede some of these things. There's a place called Gold and Silver Pawn Shop, in Vegas. There was a time person could build a pawn shop in Somewhere Else Entirely with that same name, and that'd be fine. But now that the Pawn Stars TV series has made the place very famous, it's something that would almost certainly be shown to be a well-known mark if someone were naive enough to try to use that name for their own new pawn shop, today. The Vegas shop would almost certainly win that court battle.

I'd like to think that notepad++ is also a well-known mark by this point.

---

Anyway my intent earlier was just to help promote the concept of registration being optional-but-useful, not to write a book about trademarks. :)

And IANAL. I just got wrapped up in a trademark issue myself nearly 20 years ago, wherein I had been doing nothing wrong by using a name that another small company had been already been using in a very different market segment. Our uses were for very different things.

They subsequently got much bigger and arguably came to be well-known, and they wanted me to stop using that name. I had a valid case: I wasn't infringing when I started.

But I no money and no lawyers, while they had enough money and lawyers that there was no way I'd survive in court.

Hell, there was no way I'd even be able to afford to appear in court; I'd have lost by default and probably been required to pay for the whole mess. I was broke as fuck back then (I still am, but I was then, too).

But what I did have was some time, so I used that time to stuff my brain full of information about how trademarks work -- to prove to myself whether I had a leg to stand on as much as anything else.

I should have just given up. A sane person would have just washed their hands of it all and moved on. But I really liked the name I was using, and I am not always very sane.

It worked out OK, I guess: At the end of that very stressful time, I wound up giving them exactly what they wanted, and they ended up giving me some money in exchange. No courtroom was involved.

And now we're square. (And to be clear: I don't blame them at all for any of this. They're a good company. But even good companies are required to actively defend their trademark. Trademarks are not like patents: You need to use it, and actively defend it, or it is lost.)

> Lots of very plain-looking things work as trademarks. Some obvious examples: AAA, BBB, Target, Just Do It.

These are plain-looking, but none of them are descriptive. Target isn't a target, it's a discount store. If they'd be called "Discount Store" then I believe they'd have trouble getting a trademark. If they'd be called "Retailer" or "Store" or if you'd make a Stripe competitor called "Payment Processor" I don't think you'd stand a chance.

But really the intention of my comment was hoping that someone on HN could answer this:

> Is using a mark in trade enough only if it qualifies as a trademark in the first place?

> > Is using a mark in trade enough only if it qualifies as a trademark in the first place?

If does not qualify, then it is unqualified.

(Is this a riddle?)

Thank you for explaining this to me. That makes total sense!

If a mac user is in France, does the software they use have to abide by French laws?

Software that is being distributed in France must abide by French laws.

How does it work when actual source license is GPL?

Trademark protects the right of consumers to not be misled by fakes or frauds -- it applies to the names and identifiers that people apply to products and services, e.g the brand name.

Open source copyright licenses allow you to use the source code, but they typically do not grant any trademark rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian%E2%80%93Mozilla_tradema...|

It is Mozilla public license, not GPL, but the story is the same.

Or look at CentOS (before it was acquired by RedHat)

The author is happy for people to fork etc, you just can't call it "notepad++" since that's trademarked

Yes

I dropped Notepad++ after their last malware issue^. I miss it, but I'm not going back. I can't believe anyone would trust this.

^ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-up...

becase there is only one Notepad.exe https://notepadexe.com on the mac

Bold from someone who named its program notepad++

I wonder how the legal battle will develop : the trademark https://data.inpi.fr/marques/FR5133202 is France only I think ? So a Paris resident infringed upon by a NYC resident, with content on github and also a website registered with godaddy (according to whois) and using cloudflare dns servers. Good luck sorting everything out. Although maybe the relative fame of the project will act as a lubricant/privilege in this case ? (IANAL but if this case is as obvious as it looks, speed would be good. And ideally it would be fast for any such case, not just the famous ones)

Why not just getting the changes/extensions upstream, welcome the Mac dev on the team, and make it an official port?

You don’t adopt an unofficial fork just because it exists. Showing up with a clone isn’t the same as meeting the standards required to be part of the original project

That might have been a possibility if brought forward in an open and reasonable way, a bit harder to trust someone once they just vibe adopted the project someone was working on for decades and didn't seen an issue with that. Also "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

The "author" couldn't tell you the why behind any of the original design decisions. It's vibecoded, they never had to know. They would be a terrible teammate with no actual understanding of the project.

Maybe there are trust issues now? I certainly would refuse to work with someone who comes and steals my brand, pretends I am on board with this and refuses to comply even after being called out.

Author of this Mac port has 1 month old online presence.

Nobody else has pointed this out, but a MacOS port of Notepad++ actually goes against some of the branding. Notepad++ very much markets itself as a lightweight and speedy thing that uses the low-level Win32 API directly. It is not just a native application, it is a Windows-native application. Porting it to macOS requires a level of care and expertise which is tantamount to changing the entire organization.

I am sure the Notepad++ team is perfectly fine focusing on Windows expertise and has no interest in bringing in the overhead of another OS. If a serious macOS expert wants to do that, they can fork the project with a different name.

BTW look at the GitHub issues. This is a lazy developer creating a slop project. It would be stupid to bring this incompetent and dishonest person on board.

It is astonishing how blatant people can be. How do they imagine they won't be immediately called out?

Hopefully the domain and the app on the app store gets taken down soon.

He probably didn't know it was trademarked, and probably didn't think people would get upset, and he's now trying to make it right. Why assume malice on this guy?

He seems to have enough experience to know how trademarks work

> He probably didn't know it was trademarked

The fact it's trademarked provides the original project more legal protections, but regardless of whether or not a trademark is registered it's clearly unethical to use another project's name without prior permission. If it weren't a trademark violation, it'd still be wrong, so the knowledge of whether or not it was registered as a trademark is basically irrelevant.

GP isn’t assuming malice, they are wondering how someone can be so foolish or naive.

Someone who understands trademark law knows that it doesn't even matter whether it is a registered trademark... because it is well known enough to clearly be an unregistered trademark by default.

Notepad+++ was born.

Trademark infringement seems to be rising these days, thanks to AI slop. Surprisingly, the domain registrars and hosting providers don't really seem to care much about these issues.

To takedown something that is infringing your brand, you would have to spend time and money dealing with bureaucratic procedures.

Not to be confused with

https://notepadexe.com/

Oh cool, this one reminded me of https://www.codeedit.app/ I like the lightweight take!

Deepfaked software?

whats the point on doing that? is it a malware or some kind of trojan?

Not that that isn't a possibility (now muted), but you don't have to speculate on a grand conspiracy when 'just an asshole' will suffice.

It's the Trump pattern: break all rules to benefit yourself until someone or something stops you. USA has not yet reached this clarity.

I think this all turns on, did the original author assert "Addtional Terms" under GPL v3 7e:

e) Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some trade names, trademarks, or service marks; or

If he did not, it would appear to this non-lawyer that he released the icon and branding under the GPL.

The author does not have to assert those additional terms to have trademark protection, because the law provides for that by default, and the GPL v3 does not have a trademark grant clause.

GPL v3 e7 means that, if for whatever reason, you do explicitly disclaim trademark grants, it does not violate or invalidate the copyright license.

I wasn’t even aware a native port was available for Mac. I tried it with Wine and it was awful. These days my colleagues and I are using Zed as the de facto high-performance text editor.

Notepad++ is GPL, and this fork has followed the rules of that license.

Other GPL projects have unofficial forks that didn't change the name or logo for the software in the process, and it mostly seems fine. FreeBSD ports are probably a good example of these in the wild.

Listing the original author as an author of the port is a requirement of the GPL, and the language used on this website makes it clear that Dan is the original author of the Windows release, and not the developer of the Mac release.

The only thing I see as an issue here is how the author of the port, Andrey, has failed to directly indicate that this is an unofficial port anywhere on the website, and is promoting this as if it were official. He does seem to be some engaging in some shameless self-promotion, and I understand how the open source community would not appreciate someone vibe-porting a popular GPL tool, and then acting like they own part of the official project now.

In that respect, I do see a trademark violation.

> FreeBSD ports are probably a good example of these in the wild.

FreeBSD ports are nearly always tiny patches on a project together it to compile on that OS, and look for its config in /usr/local/etc instead of /etc. It is the original software plus minimal tweaks. Linux distros do the exact same thing. When you install a Debian package, you’re getting Debian’s patched version. Same for RedHat, Homebrew, and nearly every other package manager.

The fork we’re discussing here is a rewrite of the original in a different language while still calling it the original name.

Trademark violation is the problem. It is a sufficiently significant problem.

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