"Notepad++ for Mac" release is disavowed by the creator of the original

Letov responded two days later, saying he hadn’t meant to insinuate that Ho was involved with the Notepad++ for Mac project. But he did insist that his port “actually expands notepad++ brand to mac” and expressed hope that Ho would allow him to continue to use the name. Ho responded, again asking Letov to stop using the Notepad++ name and logo and to change the project’s URL so that users would not mistake the project for an official Notepad++ port and contact Ho looking for support. “I will prep for the site and some naming changes,” wrote Letov. “Give me a couple of weeks. My intention was to expand your brand. I really hope that at some point in the future you change your mind and see this as a positive growth for your brand.” At this point, Ho seemed to lose patience with Letov’s responses, particularly with being asked to allow Letov to continue using the Notepad++ name for “a couple of weeks.” Ho reported the use of the Notepad++ trademark to Cloudflare, the CDN of the Notepad++ for Mac site, and asked Letov to take it down. “Every day that website remains active, you are in further violation of the law,” Ho wrote earlier today. “I cannot authorize a ‘week or two’ of continued trademark infringement.” Letov began changing the website two days ago, though at first he claimed to be making these changes “in coordination with Don Ho.” This drew further accusations from other GitHub users that he was trying to misrepresent the port’s relationship to the original project. Those changes continue and have ramped up over the last few hours; the app will now be called “NextPad++,” an homage to NeXT Computer, and uses a frog icon rather than the Notepad++ lizard. The original version, along with the authors page that lists Ho beneath Letove, is available via Internet Archive snapshots. Letov claims that the app’s name will change in version 1.0.6. Version 1.0.5, with the Notepad++ logo and branding intact, is available for download. The project’s URL also hasn’t changed. “I primarily use Claude CLI with some customizations to run multiple agents and also Codex plugin for VSS. I also use Beads,” Letov told Ars. “Website is also partly managed using Claude CLI plus some manual work on graphics.” “I run some agents that scan for Issues and general issues reported, list/create options to implement features and fixes. I usually review most and decide on the path,” Letov continued when asked how much human oversight the project had. “Also UIs are not as easily tested by AI as backend code and some things have to be thought through and build iteratively.” It’s not that I think the use of AI coding tools should be disqualifying in and of itself. AI coding tools do have real utility, and many companies and projects are making at least some use of them; you likely are running or will eventually run an app containing AI-generated code whether you want to or not. But the port being both “independent” and AI-generated heightens my existing concerns about ongoing support and the developer’s capability to address bug reports and merge upstream code. And, as Ho and other users warned in the GitHub thread, downloading an unvetted unofficial port of a project can increase your risk of downloading malware. “I apologize for sounding paranoid, but I have not verified your code & binaries, and I have no time to do so,” wrote Ho, who comes by his concern about hidden malware in Notepad++ honestly.