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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.
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.
Tech bloggers are just LLMs these days
This is why trademarks exist.
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.
I guess it depends on whether it's likely to confuse people?
> 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++.
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.
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?
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.
More likely, the guy is just a clown.
This whole endeavour on aletik's part seems like vanity at best and probably just a malware vector down the line regardless.
My concern is the ones that didn't get caught and are waiting to pull a Jia Tan.
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.
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)
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.
- 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.
"No" needs to mean something.
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).
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.
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?
What we see in the thread is people doing what you're talking about: trying to step in to stop abuse. The fact that it isn't a beating doesn't mean it isn't abuse.
Edit: I think you're mistaking empathy with passivity.
I also saw plenty of empathy in the discussion for Don Ho.
There was probably more of the second than the first, which makes sense, as the victim deserves more empathy than the perpetrator, especially while the perpetrator continues to victimize others.
I said what I said: There were people showing EMpathy for the people on both sides of the conflict in that thread. I said it because it's true. It's true and it's understandable, and probably better than if it were for just the perpetrator.
Perhaps it is you who misunderstands the term? Between us two random people out of billions, it might statistically be just as likely, and neither of us is an impartial judge of the other's understanding. Do you see how that approach to discussion is thus not productive?
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.
Yes, like the slop-author here adding gaslighting onto their continuing abuse here, using polite language and self-justification to mask that they are being abusive.
> The reason why I advocate for “more empathy” is because I firmly believe it can make you more successful in firm boundary setting and in communicating and achieving your goals
Don Ho tried that first, even encouraging forks under a different name, yet the abuse still continues. Thus, the hypothesis did not hold true in this case. The other comments you see from victims about how the abuser is violating boundaries, are a direct consequence of the hypothesis being tried and failing here.
Not that it will always fail: it's probably a good idea in general. It just didn't work here. It is an unfortunate fact of life that there exist personalities in this world who simply ignore "no" or "stop hurting me" when it conflicts with their own desires. No amount of empathy will make these people immediately stop.
I don’t share the analysis that it didn’t work; it didn’t work so far; the story is live and still unfolding.
> I don’t share the analysis that it didn’t work; it didn’t work so far; the story is live and still unfolding.
I think that Don would, and speaking objectively, we can see that it did not achieve the objective of immediately ceasing violations (potentially including, but not limited to, temporarily taking the site offline while further discussions are had). The immediacy is an inherent part of the objective. A solution that takes days, much less weeks, before the abuse stops, is an inadequate remedy here, and that has been explained to the abuser.
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.
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)
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.
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.
This doesn’t seem like for money, but for esteem.
It doesn’t suck.®
I've maintained my copy of it from back in the MacOS 7.x days.
Never attribute to stupidity (incompetence|naivety) that which is adequately explained by malice.
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.
Also, his medium avatar looks awfully generated.
I am not surprised that your comments are not dead, as it's been perfectly acceptable to insinuate various things about certain groups of people here, or even straight up write horrible things about them, based on nothing but their surface characteristics. As long as you're careful to avoid some "protected" groups, that is.
Even the tired excuse of "I am just asking questions" is there, slightly modified.
I consulted Jia Tan on his opinion of this situation, but he is yet to respond. In Mandarin Chinese, of course.
What do you mean by this? Aren’t most avatar images generated three days?
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.
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
No inexperience here. It is malice
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.
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'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.
Also' he's not young. Check his github avatar
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.
I’d pay more attention to his behavior.
> The authors brazen reaction another
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.
Fork author is either a young kid or clueless.
The author of the "rewrite" didn't seem to say this
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
"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?!?!"
"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.
If I fork a repo on GitHub and the name of the project is trademarked, have I committed trademark violation?
In this case he just went a little too far by cloning the whole website. Even then tbh I still take his side because it's in the spirit of the Wild West Internet culture to have done something like this.
There is no language or culture barrier here. This guy knows exactly what he's doing.
We'll wait while you check it out :D
If you purport that you are that project, then yes.
Trademark is a consumer protection law that protects people from misrepresentation -- when you buy a Coca Cola you know it is the Coca Cola.
If there is any confusion that [x] software port is from the same original author of [x], it is trademark infringement.
> what even is the point of open source if you can't do that?
Open source is about sharing the code itself -- it is not about misrepresenting who wrote it. There is a very clear line between the two.
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).
They didn't even bother removing the links!
There's no coordination.
You'll have to let us know how you reached that conclusion.
https://github.com/nextpad-plus-plus/nextpad-plus-plus-macos
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.
It's not hard to do the right thing, either upfront or once you realize you'd done the wrong thing.
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.
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.
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.
"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++ ;-)
> 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.
> 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++.
"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
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.
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.
Source: having been in ex-USSR through all of 1990s and 2000s.
> "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!'
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.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260430011533/https://www.heise...
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.
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.
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++.
However the author says he will "move from the branding".
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 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.
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?
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.
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.)
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.
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.)
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?
If does not qualify, then it is unqualified.
(Is this a riddle?)
Copyright protects the right of authors to decide how their work is used -- it applies to the content, e.g. the code.
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.
It is Mozilla public license, not GPL, but the story is the same.
Or look at CentOS (before it was acquired by RedHat)
^ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-up...
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.
Hopefully the domain and the app on the app store gets taken down soon.
He seems to have enough experience to know how trademarks work
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.
To takedown something that is infringing your brand, you would have to spend time and money dealing with bureaucratic procedures.
But they do!
Have you looked at https://archlinux.org/ ?
Scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see:
> The registered trademark Linux® is used pursuant to a sublicense from LMI, the exclusive licensee of Linus Torvalds, owner of the mark on a world-wide basis.
Tons of ads? Really? I had to turn off my adblocker to check, but there is a single ad block on the bottom left. Is that considered a ton?
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.
GPL v3 e7 means that, if for whatever reason, you do explicitly disclaim trademark grants, it does not violate or invalidate the copyright 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 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.
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issue...
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.
In the U.S. its only covered by common-law trademark rights from long use, as there’s no federal registration.
The port just can’t use the trademark. Call it something else.
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.
Accurate description is not at all what the legal issue is about.
just like pepsi bottle crate is a crate for bottles of pepsi
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.
...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, 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.
(Which is his right and no permission to do anything)
> 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.
The trademark is still in active use for Notepad++ though. That’s not squatting.
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.
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
(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.
"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.
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 :)
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.
If you want an editor with the same core as Notepad++, but fewer batteries included and more extensibility, Textadept is worth a look.
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.
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.
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.