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throwaway2037
QuiEgo
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.
jeffnash
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.
lukan
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.
ssl-3
"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.
jeffnash
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 :)
msephton
Call it Nopepad++
necovek
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.
outofpaper
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.
kube-system
You don't need a trademark registration to send a cease-and-desist... you can just send one.
archy_
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.
nkrisc
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.
kube-system
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.
SllX
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.
bartread
But you can trivially easily run Notepad++ on Mac using Wine. It works flawlessly. Nobody is keeping anything from anybody.
nikanj
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
pessimizer
"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.
yazantapuz
Call it notemac++, tell that its a fork of notepad++.
croes
There is a demand for the functionality, no need to use the name just to push the port.
doctorpangloss
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
pibaker
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.
b3ing
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
Fwirt
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.
m-p-3
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.
throwaway2037
Surely, this is a troll reply, but it made me think about this Lord of Rings meme/quote:
> One does not simply walk into Mordordoctorpangloss
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.
FinnKuhn
Using the trademark is one thing. The authors brazen reaction another: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issue...
rpigab
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.
doginasuit
> 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.
PythagoRascal
"The author" in above comment refers to the author of the port. So, yes, thats what they meant.
undefined
ruszki
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.
stackghost
>Tech bloggers should know better than to promote this without checking.
Tech bloggers are just LLMs these days
tardedmeme
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.
hnlmorg
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.
koiueo
> 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.
f3408fh
The disclaimer he put up on the website is comical. "In coordination with [original author], I will be _evolving the brand_ to …"
testfrequency
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?
xeonmc
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.
bayindirh
Smells like AI slop past its expiration date, to be honest.
xantronix
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.
pndy
Maybe this is some weird attempt to see if malicious takeover with bots is possible
47282847
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.
lukan
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.
emaro
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.
koiueo
Judging by the fork author's name, should've asked them in russian :-/
cryptonym
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.
lopis
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.
AureliusMA
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.
Matl
> 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.
undefined
f3408fh
A malicious actor would be happy to be publicly labeled inexperienced/naive.
wartywhoa23
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.
doginasuit
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.
i_think_so
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.
pndy
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.
RobotToaster
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.
i_think_so
Does he remind you of anyone?
prepend
> Also, his medium avatar looks awfully generated.
What do you mean by this? Aren’t most avatar images generated three days?
azrazalea_debt
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.
koiueo
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
whateverboat
Product manager in software for 10 years. I cannot believe the inexperienced defense.
freehorse
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.
wang_li
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.
throwaway2037
> 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.
mg794613
The brazen part is Andrey Letov pretending to not understand.
infecto
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.
Cieric
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?
infecto
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.
altairprime
Or a tech founder (gestures at Ubercab)
efilife
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
doginasuit
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.
Semaphor
It sounds brazen and incredibly entitled. The LLM response seems fitting for a vibe coded project with a vibe brain author.
nerdjon
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.
pjc50
AI means never having to ask permission. Or forgiveness, it seems.
2ndorderthought
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.
wartywhoa23
Asking? Inessential!
_0xdd
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.
donkers
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.
jmull
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).
adamtulinius
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!
minimaxir
MacRumors has now just posted another post about the controversy: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/04/notepad-plus-plus-trade...
koiueo
MacRumors repeated Letov's "in coordination with" bs.
There's no coordination.
throwaway27448
Isn't notepad++ also a vector for malware? It would seem to be more of a violation of the trademark to not distribute malware
jmull
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.
kasabali
Seriously your argument is this? Not even 3 months have passed since this [1] happened?
ChrisMarshallNY
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.
c-hendricks
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.
EdwardDiego
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.
ChrisMarshallNY
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.
hannahstrawbrry
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
netruk44
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.
x187463
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.
tencentshill
TextEdit++ is a lot more fitting anyways.
LeCompteSftware
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.
ErroneousBosh
> "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++ ;-)
mghackerlady
Objective C is a nice language, it's a shame it only really caught on because apple bought next
kelvinjps10
By the name the domain has probably use another domain too
minimaxir
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.
gblargg
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++.
user3939382
idk it clearly says ported and addresses that it’s not the original about 3x in the FAQ
HelloUsername
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
kstrauser
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.
KORraN
Original announcement and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964
redbell
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.
sleepybrett
coordination must mean, 'i've been threatened legally by'
f3408fh
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.
AureliusMA
This is such a blow for MacRumors... I won't be taking them seriously anymore after this. They are complicit.
dewey
A website that's specialized into running unconfirmed rumors for clicks, shocking!
ezfe
9to5mac writes clickbait headlines but MacRumors violates journalistic integrity. They always have been worse, there’s nothing new.
odie5533
The National Enquirer publishing rumors and gossip?! I'll never read them again!
layer8
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.
nguyenkien
First thing I do is check official notepad++ website. I didn't see anything, that what's stop me.
f3408fh
Smart. Good on you for noticing it wasn’t the real website.
0x000xca0xfe
Same with heise online, Germany's largest IT news site:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260430011533/https://www.heise...
j1elo
I mean, the website is called "Rumors", so their reliability is in compliance with the letter of the contract :-)
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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...