This reaction is normal, aletik could have been the next Jia Tan, for all we know, and could have distributed "fake notepad++ for Mac" binaries with backdoors in them to thousand of Mac users who think it is an officially n++-endorsed project when it is not, created by someone who is unknown.
Aletik can fork n++ and find a name for it, but can't use the brand and logo, and should be stopped by all means necessary if he does not comply ASAP. Tech bloggers should know better than to promote this without checking.
> Tech bloggers should know better than to promote this without checking.
Agreed, and it also seems unlikely this will be their takeaway. They now get to report on the drama which will probably get more clicks.
"The author" in above comment refers to the author of the port. So, yes, thats what they meant.
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.
>Tech bloggers should know better than to promote this without checking.
Tech bloggers are just LLMs these days
If you compiled notepad++ for Mac how should you make it available on the internet so people with Macs can download notepad++? Don't tell me you have to call it something else because that's absolutely insane, even if the law agrees.
The issue is by calling it Notepad++, you're now confusing users into thinking it's officially endorsed. Which means complaints, feature requests, bugs, and even any backdoors/malware included in the unofficial version tarnishes the reputation of the official product.
This is why trademarks exist.
So what should you do? Just call it My Awesome Notepad and expect users who are searching for Notepad++ to somehow find it? A name like "John's Notepad++ for Mac" would seem reasonable to me but still isn't compliant with trademark law.
An example give by donho is "SomeProject : a macOS port of Notepad++" so it seems like the name can be used which will make it appear in searches. It just has to be clearly something else.
I think that's still trademark infringement.
You can tell people what something is, that is nominative use of the trademark. Actually putting it in center of the branding might be infringing, but Don Ho gave their blessing to use that, so that point is moot anyways.
> So what should you do? Just call it My Awesome Notepad and expect users who are searching for Notepad++ to somehow find it?
Yes. Exactly that. You have no entitlement to free publicity based of someone else's hard work growing their own brand.
You could arguably say "Awesome Notepad, a Notepad++ fork" but even here, the trademark holders can demand you to remove the references to their product if they wished. In this specific instance, Given Notepad++ is open source, I suspect the maintainers of Notepad++ might have been okay with this approach. Though it's a little late for that now because the Mac port author has burned any good faith they might have had.
Another option is to gain trust with the Notepad++ maintainers and then request they link to "Awesome Notepad" project site as an endorsed 3rd party port. But again, the Mac port author hasn't taken the right approach to gain any trust there.
So as it stands, "Notepad++ Mac" is intentionally using Notepad++'s trademarks and branding as a way to get publicity quickly. I don't think they're doing it maliciously, but the intent is still dishonest.
Can you really demand someone not have any references to your product? Surely people are allowed to refer to it to explain their fork's relation to the original, otherwise it would also be illegal to compare your product against competitors in advertising or to review anything
I guess it depends on whether it's likely to confuse people?
As we speak, the Mac version's website is peppered with statements like:
> Is Notepad++ available for Mac?
> Yes. Notepad++ is now natively available for macOS as a free download.
That's over the line. This isn't a few tweaks to get it to compile on a Mac, but a wholesale rewrites of big chunks of it. It's a fork of Notepad++, but it's not the Notepad++.
I was replying to the hypothetical situation in the comment of saying "Awesome Notepad, a Notepad++ fork"
Gotcha.
This is where trademark law starts to get a little murky and the law will differ from country to country.
Does it?
Yes. For example: https://claimistry.com/trademark-law-differences-across-coun...
> If you compiled notepad++ for Mac
That's not what happened:
- there's a lot of UI code, so it's not a mere distribution for Mac, not even sure it qualifies as a port at this point
- also, the authors page states Letov as the first author
It's in fact a fork. And unless the original author is ok with that, you shouldn't advertise your fork under the original name.