Comment by tardedmeme
3 hours ago
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.
> 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.
4 replies →
> 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.