[pessimizer]

"Squatting on a trademark" makes no sense. You might as well say that I'm squatting on my name because I'm not allowing other people to sign contracts for me.

You can clone someone's project without pretending to be them. They literally put his bio up. Call it something else, put your own bio up.

[nagaiaida]

> They literally put his bio up.

...crediting him as the author of the original, not the mac port.

without commenting on anything to do with trademarks, in what way is that even slightly pretending to be him? why would they put another, separate bio alongside as the person doing a mac port if they were intending to masquerade as the original author?

[ImPostingOnHN]

If the "author" of this port respected Don Ho enough to credit him in the contributors section of his project, then why didn't he respect Don Ho enough to ask first?

If the "author" of this port respected Don Ho enough to credit him in the contributors section of his project, why doesn't he respect Don Ho enough to comply with the request to take down the violations?

This conflict indicates that the respect was never there, and thus the motivation for the bio was probably credibility laundering.

[lukan]

He did ask first, but Don Ho did not respond.

(Which is his right and no permission to do anything)

[ImPostingOnHN]

Don writes,

> For context: I received an email from Andrey Letov on April 8, 2026, informing me that he had just ported Notepad++ to macOS, and ask for contact, without providing further info.

So no asking to use trademarks beforehand, and no asking Don if it's okay to include him on the contributor page for the violating software.

[austhrow743]

I don’t think they are trying to masquerade as the author so much as imply a positive association or endorsement.