alt Hacker NewsTrademark violation: Fake Notepad++ for Mac
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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.
Original announcement and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964
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
A similar thing happened for OTR recently. [1] Is the AI naming the vibe coded projects? Many of these are getting submitted to /newest
I would not trust this "Notepad++ for Mac" at all. The author of the "port", aka Vibe Coded slop, Andrey Letov has absolutely zero commits anywhere before he suddenly vibes up this mac release. He brands it as an official Notepad++ version, is slimy in the way he interacts with the Notepad++ team etc. I would not be surprised if theres some sort of back door or malware attack vector embedded in this software. Stay away! Remember the XZ Utils backdoor!
becase there is only one Notepad.exe https://notepadexe.com on the mac
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.
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.
Plenty of very thoughtful comments so far about copyright, community, developers who might not speak English as a first language, .... Very few people mentioning the obvious:
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.
Why not just getting the changes/extensions upstream, welcome the Mac dev on the team, and make it an official port?
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".
Not to be confused with
whats the point on doing that? is it a malware or some kind of trojan?
(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."
It's the Trump pattern: break all rules to benefit yourself until someone or something stops you. USA has not yet reached this clarity.
I wasn’t even aware a native port was available for Mac. I tried it with Wine and it was awful. These days my colleagues and I are using Zed as the de facto high-performance text editor.
Using the trademark is one thing. The authors brazen reaction another: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issue...