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.
f3408fh 1 hours ago [-]
The disclaimer he put up on the website is comical. "In coordination with [original author], I will be _evolving the brand_ to …"
bayindirh 19 minutes ago [-]
Smells like AI slop past its expiration date, to be honest.
pndy 3 minutes ago [-]
Maybe this is some weird attempt to see if malicious takeover with bots is possible
47282847 1 hours ago [-]
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 7 minutes ago [-]
His 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.
cryptonym 46 minutes ago [-]
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 20 minutes ago [-]
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.
47282847 4 minutes ago [-]
People react differently to feedback without necessarily bad intentions. Not everyone is ready to instantly admit mistakes. Empathy goes a long way.
AureliusMA 1 hours ago [-]
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 12 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
25 minutes ago [-]
pndy 46 minutes ago [-]
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 29 minutes ago [-]
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.
f3408fh 1 hours ago [-]
A malicious actor would be happy to be publicly labeled inexperienced/naive.
doginasuit 42 minutes ago [-]
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.
lopis 26 minutes ago [-]
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.
f3408fh 36 minutes ago [-]
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.
freehorse 17 minutes ago [-]
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.
efilife 15 minutes ago [-]
> 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
LeCompteSftware 1 hours ago [-]
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.
efilife 13 minutes ago [-]
I'm spamming this everywhere - taken from his blog:
> 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
f3408fh 6 minutes ago [-]
It sounds like BS. Guy’s done it all if you believe his resume.
pjc50 1 hours ago [-]
AI means never having to ask permission. Or forgiveness, it seems.
RobotToaster 22 minutes ago [-]
Honestly, the dude has added a disclaimer and agreed to change the name/logo/etc, giving the poor guy a few days to come up with a new name and register the URL doesn't seem a lot to ask. The dogpiling in that thread now seems especially unnecessary.
doginasuit 57 minutes ago [-]
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 50 minutes ago [-]
It sounds brazen and incredibly entitled. The LLM response seems fitting for a vibe coded project with a vibe brain author.
bartread 60 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
LeCompteSftware 1 hours ago [-]
"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?!?!"
ssl-3 53 minutes ago [-]
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.
ares623 36 minutes ago [-]
We have found the limits of agentic engineering. Changing a logo on a website apparently takes weeks.
as1mov 49 minutes ago [-]
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.
efilife 20 minutes ago [-]
This comment really put it into perspective to me. I wouldn't have phrased it better myself
efilife 23 minutes ago [-]
Oh what the hell. This is the vibe coder mentality. Grift, as far as it goes
Why not just getting the changes/extensions upstream, welcome the Mac dev on the team, and make it an official port?
lukan 3 minutes ago [-]
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.
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.
LeCompteSftware 1 hours ago [-]
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 56 minutes ago [-]
> "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++ ;-)
Bender 19 minutes ago [-]
A similar thing happened for OTR recently. [1] Is the AI naming the vibe coded projects? Many of these are getting submitted to /newest
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.
j1elo 42 seconds ago [-]
I mean, the website is called "Rumors", so their reliability is in compliance with the letter of the contract :-)
AureliusMA 1 hours ago [-]
This is such a blow for MacRumors... I won't be taking them seriously anymore after this. They are complicit.
odie5533 29 minutes ago [-]
The National Enquirer publishing rumors and gossip?! I'll never read them again!
f3408fh 48 minutes ago [-]
Me neither. So far all I see is a puny "[Updated]" title on the article with no apology or indication of what was updated.
pndy 40 minutes ago [-]
An apology? That'd be... breaking news /s
nguyenkien 1 hours ago [-]
First thing I do is check official notepad++ website. I didn't see anything, that what's stop me.
f3408fh 1 hours ago [-]
Smart. Good on you for noticing it wasn’t the real website.
omblivion 1 hours ago [-]
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.
odie5533 30 minutes ago [-]
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?
efilife 18 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
He seems to have enough experience to know how trademarks work
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?
mr_toad 50 minutes ago [-]
You can enforce an unregistered trademark, but you need evidence that it’s actually yours. Registration makes that easier.
IshKebab 52 minutes ago [-]
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.
ssl-3 37 minutes ago [-]
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.)
deaux 17 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
FinnKuhn 6 minutes ago [-]
Thank you for explaining this to me. That makes total sense!
voidUpdate 58 minutes ago [-]
If a mac user is in France, does the software they use have to abide by French laws?
AureliusMA 1 hours ago [-]
Yes
ares623 33 minutes ago [-]
(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."
karel-3d 1 hours ago [-]
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".
odie5533 27 minutes ago [-]
I suspect we will not see a non-vibe-coded app again. I think such days are in the past now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also, his medium avatar looks awfully generated.
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.
No inexperience here. It is 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'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
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.
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.
"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.
"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
"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++ ;-)
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47997919
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
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?
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.
However the author says he will "move from the branding".
https://notepadexe.com/