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'Notepad++ For Mac' Release Is Disavowed By the Creator of the Original (arstechnica.com) 62

Posted by BeauHD from the trademark-violations dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Andrew Cunningham: As its name implies, the venerable Notepad++ text editor began as a more capable version of the classic Windows Notepad, with features such as line numbering and syntax highlighting. It was created in 2003 by Don Ho, who continues to be its primary author and maintainer, and it has been a Windows-exclusive app throughout its existence (older Notepad++ versions support OSes as old as Windows 95; the current version officially supports everything going back to Windows 7). I'm not a devoted user of the app, but I was aware of its history, which is why I was surprised to see news of a "Notepad++ for Mac" port making the rounds last week, as though it were a port of the original available from the Notepad++ website.

Apparently, this news surprised Ho as well, who claims that the Mac version and its author, Andrey Letov, are "using the Notepad++ trademark (the name) without permission." "This is misleading, inappropriate, and frankly disrespectful to both the project and its users," Ho wrote. "It has already fooled people -- including tech media -- into believing this is an official release. To be crystal clear: Notepad++ has never released a macOS version. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply riding on the Notepad++ name." Ho repeatedly asked the developer to stop using the brand and eventually reported the trademark use to Cloudflare, the CDN of the Notepad++ for Mac site. "Every day that website remains active, you are in further violation of the law," Ho wrote. "I cannot authorize a 'week or two' of continued trademark infringement."

Letov has since begun rebranding the app as "NextPad++," though the old branding and URL reportedly remained available. The name changes is "an homage to NeXT Computer," notes Ars, "and uses a frog icon rather than the Notepad++ lizard."

'Notepad++ For Mac' Release Is Disavowed By the Creator of the Original More | Reply

'Notepad++ For Mac' Release Is Disavowed By the Creator of the Original

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  • BBedit (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Malc ( 1751 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @11:13AM (#66128696)

    Does the job. Been doing the job on Macs for decades (since 1992). Sometimes called Text Wrangler (it was the free cut-down version), until BBedit got a free version too. Please support Bare Bones by using BBedit.

    And there's always VIM.

    BBedit and Beyond Compare are my two must-have utilities on my Macs. Both companies have served Mac users for a long time, great products, great support and none of this bullshit and enshitification like so many recent software companies.

  • Don Ho is correct about his trademark (yes, it's registered), and Andrey Letov appears to be showing the proper respect to Don by renaming and rebranding the port.

    • Re:Trademark (Score:5, Informative)

      by giesen ( 820885 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @11:32AM (#66128726)

      Don Ho is correct about his trademark (yes, it's registered), and Andrey Letov appears to be showing the proper respect to Don by renaming and rebranding the port.

      That's a charitable interpretation of what's been going on. If you read the GitHub issue, Don Ho has been asking Andrey Letov for days to rebrand, and Andrey has been stalling and deferring, and even after he started the rename, and was implying some sort of coordination between the projects or official support where none existed. Don was initially very polite with Andrey, giving him the benefit of the doubt, but it's become clear through his tactics that Andrey has been trying to ride Notepad++'s trademark into launch his vibe-coded MacOS port.

      • Days.

        I don't give a * about a spat over a few hours or days.

        Trademark law can take YEARS to resolve.

        For anyone other than Natepad++, this is a nothing.

        • I don't give a * about a spat over a few hours or days.

          You may not, probably because you don't hold any meaningful trademarks.

    • Don Ho is correct about his trademark (yes, it's registered) ...

      How did that happen? Adding "++" to an existing trademark would seem too similar, too confusing. And being well known as the "notepad" replacement sort of backs up such an argument, the two being seen as related by so many.

      Did Microsoft abandon the trademark? Was the trademark awarded the day before a long weekend and people were getting sloppy?

  • Trademark in GPU source (Score:4, Interesting)

    by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @11:18AM (#66128700) Homepage
    It strikes me that putting a product name inside source code under GPL license -- which explicitly encourages modification and distribution of source code -- should constitute abandonment of U.S. trademark. However, a California District Court ruled against that logic in Neo4j v. PureThink [justia.com]. It seems GPL needs to explicitly address trademarks, such as right to say "fork of X" -- akin to how it had to address the patent issue.

    • Creators of derivative works don't need the right to use the original name, just the code.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by higuita ( 129722 )

      you can still fork the code, find&replace the old trademark name with a new one, job done

      Trademark and GPL aren't incompatible and you can still say "forked from ABC at ($date)", you have a new product, new name and proper trademark usage

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by unrtst ( 777550 )

      As others have already implied, GPL needs no such special handling for trademarks, and this is nothing new. See OpenOffice/LibreOffice, Redis/Valkey, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, MySQL/MariaDB, Firefox/Iceweasel, etc etc etc.. And why shouldn't an OpenSource product have a trademarked name?

    • too late (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The notion that the GPL can be "updated" has been dead for decades now. GPL 3 came out in 2007 and the transition has been rough to put it mildly. The people with common sense (e.g. Linus Torvalds) didn't allow "or any later version" so even if Zoë Kooyman (who you've totally heard of -- she's the executive director of the FSF currently) decided to issue a GPL 2.0.1 and 3.0.1 to address the trademark issue it would just cause all kinds of churn in the free software space and the trend of moving away fr

    • It strikes me that putting a product name inside source code under GPL license -- which explicitly encourages modification and distribution of source code -- should constitute abandonment of U.S. trademark.

      What are you talking about? Putting a name inside code has never caused the trademark to be abandoned. By that logic, IBM lost all trademark rights if they ever release code with their name in it like: "Copyrighted by IBM Corporation"

      However, a California District Court ruled against that logic in Neo4j v. PureThink [justia.com]. It seems GPL needs to explicitly address trademarks, such as right to say "fork of X" -- akin to how it had to address the patent issue.

      Your specific filing only shows that a Court of Appeals agreed with the district court on granting a preliminary injunction. It does not shows the court ruling. In fact it specifically states: "This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as p

    • This is nothing new Meshtastic is open source, but the logo and name is trademarked. It's probably not a bad tatic in this day and age of Chinese companies finding an open source product of interest, cloning it and cranking out devices by the millions with no credit given to the original creator.

  • TextEdit++ (Score:4, Interesting)

    by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @11:21AM (#66128702) Homepage

    The name TextEdit++ was right there.

  • Does the Mac version have all the malware in it from last year?

    https://www.pcmag.com/news/chi... [pcmag.com]

    (probably not, but it would be funny if it did)

  • We use Notepad++ in my workplace. (At least, some of our software devs do. I maintain it as one of the apps they can install via "Company Portal" in Windows from InTune.)

    I had no issues with the software, but I agree it seems pretty similar to other options out there like BBEdit. When I saw the news of a Mac version, I thought, "That's good... more choices for people. I'd never use it, but ..." And now, all this drama because it was released by someone other than the original author.

    It sounds like it'll get sorted out, even if Andrey Letov is only grudgingly renaming the app. Honestly? Best answer here would have been Don Ho doing a Mac port of Notepad++ himself. I mean, why not? It can't be that huge a project, considering it's not an app using 3D accelerated graphics or any of that. Just make an official Mac version and expand your user base.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by innocent_white_lamb ( 151825 )

      "Best answer here would have been Don Ho doing a Mac port of Notepad++ himself. I mean, why not?"

      There could be a number of reasons.

      Two examples are:

      1. He may not be interested in Mac programming and/or supporting Apple's closed ecosystem.

      2. He may not be prepared to purchase a Mac and pay Apple their ongoing fees for development and distribution of Mac applications.

      I'm sure you can think of others.

      • You donâ(TM)t need to pay Apple anything after youâ(TM)ve acquired the hardware. You donâ(TM)t need to use the Mac Store if you donâ(TM)t want to; apps can be distributed as a download, like before the Mac Store existed.

        • You donâ(TM)t need to pay Apple anything after youâ(TM)ve acquired the hardware. You donâ(TM)t need to use the Mac Store if you donâ(TM)t want to; apps can be distributed as a download, like before the Mac Store existed.

          He’s just a Gutless Hater Troll AC; pay him no mind. . .

      • Re:Drama, even for something this mundane.... Sad. (Score:4, Informative)

        by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @03:02PM (#66129180)

        He may not be prepared to purchase a Mac and pay Apple their ongoing fees for development and distribution of Mac applications.

        There are no development or distribution fees if not using the Apple store There is a yearly developer license to access Apple developer resources if I remember. A developer can purchase a Mac and develop whatever they want without paying Apple; however, distributing software is much easier to use the Apple ecosystem..

      • Macs do not have a "closed ecosystem", what ever that exactly is supposed to mean for you.

        The equivalents of "apt get [package]" as in "brew install [package]" work just fine.

        Stupid haters ...

        • I'm sure that the average Mac user who just wants to do pointy-pointy-clicky-clicky is going to go to the command line and start typing stuff to install a program that he expects to just show up on his screen.

          The mere fact that it doesn't just show up that way tends to delegitimize it in his eyes, plus the fact that even the command "brew" (as in "homebrew" or "witches brew, perhaps?) would add a dash of skepticism.

          So yes, it's likely possible to install a program on your Mac without going through the Apple

      • This is pretty much the way I look at it: Why the fuck would I pay apple their arbitrary fees and insanely high hardware markup for the privilege of adding value to a proprietary OS that doesn't even run on commodity hardware to develop against? At least windows can run in a VM, which costs me all of $0, and windows users don't bother with shitty app stores, much to Microsoft's chagrin.

        If somebody wants it to work on any apple crap, they already have the source code. They pay all applicable apple taxes, and

    • Best answer here would have been Don Ho doing a Mac port of Notepad++ himself. I mean, why not?

      Why not? For one thing, he might not have programmed on the Mac to any significant degree. This could both take more time than expected - and probably worse, result in a lower quality release. Having a "native-feel" is one of the selling points and this does require significant work.

      The other thing, a port to another platform is not just one-off work. It implies ongoing maintenance (something a lot of people miss when estimating project costs). This takes away from other work. Maybe his time is better spent

      • NotePad++ does not look native on windows.

        And people using power tools: do not care about native look - they care about native key bindings. And that menus are where they are supposed to be and a random "save file as" pops up in a logical directory, and not at a random place.

        I type this on Chrome on windows. Definitely not native.

  • no (Score:4, Informative)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @12:25PM (#66128844) Homepage Journal

    As its name implies, the venerable Notepad++ text editor began as a more capable version of the classic Windows Notepad

    s/version of/replacement for/ - the project's webpage says as much.

    In no way was Notepad++ ever a version of Notepad, which is a tech demo for some controls written by Microsoft .

    • Notepad, which is a tech demo for some controls written by Microsoft

      Apparently, its current purpose is a demo for their "Copilot" AI technology.

      • Apparently, its current purpose is a demo for their "Copilot" AI technology.

        Fair, that's a more accurate description of what it is now, what I said is actually what it was.

  • Easy fix (Score:5, Funny)

    by CubicleZombie ( 2590497 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @01:00PM (#66128924)

    Notepad+=1

  • I thought Don Ho sang "Tiny Bubbles"? When did he become a software developer?

  • Is there a reason why Don Ho doesn't like the port?

    I can understand him being upset at the misappropriation of his Trademarks, and I think he should protect them. It's all good.

    However, is there something wrong with the port? Wouldn't a more 'progressive' option to be to accept the pull request and start advertising MacOS compatibility as part of the main project?

    Is it just junk code? Is it too divergent? Does he specifically NOT want ports to other OSes?

    (Or maybe it was never offered and Letov won

  • The new name is still confusing (Score:3)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @03:10PM (#66129190)

    There is an existing years-old and actively developed reimplementation of Notepad++ that runs on macOS, called NotepadNext:

    https://github.com/dail8859/No... [github.com]

    So changing the name from "Notepad++" to "Nextpad++" is now confusing people to think it's related to NotepadNext...

  • Notepad++ believes in menus the way Outlook believes in nested dialogs.

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