LOL

Yeah, notionally plugins have to follow all these licensing rules. But in practice, there are plenty of closed-source plugins out there, and it doesn’t seem like they’ve faced any consequences for doing that.

I cringe a bit every time I see the license on my own plugin code. I have no problem with the compiled and linked DLL being distributed under the license that goes with the program it plugs into. I really would prefer my own work be licensed MIT, but I can’t figure out how to disentangle my work from the Notepad++ structure on which it depends. A statement that “my own contributions are licensed MIT, but it’s up to you to figure out which parts are independent of Notepad++ and which aren’t” doesn’t sound very helpful.

That said, note the wording in the statements you quoted: “we believe.” To have any effect, a copyright holder (i.e., the author of Notepad++) would have to choose to initiate legal action, and the court which heard that action would have to agree that the plugin was legally bound by the terms of the GPL. GNU doesn’t get to decide that; it would be contingent, I think (not a lawyer here) on whether the interface was considered copyrightable, and whether that made the plugin a derivative work.

… plugins need not be FOSS themselves

See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugins

When is a program and its plug-ins considered a single combined program?

If the main program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single combined program, which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the plug-ins.

[…]

Using shared memory to communicate with complex data structures is pretty much equivalent to dynamic linking.

And if we’re talking about .NET plugins, they even share the same window handle as N++!

That said, a platform where a person could post a bounty to be collected by whoever implements a desired functionality in a NPP plugin (since plugins need not be FOSS themselves) is probably a decent idea.

Please consider an improvement tracking list, where donations would rank up specific items. Have them pay for what they want.

Man, the author must be SERIOUS about easy access to this refund for users!! Take advantage of it!!!

I nearly liked the unhappy users edition. Felt a bit, like it was made for germans.
The current ‘8.4.4 - Happy Users Edition’ is just wrong for me. I feel left out, even discriminated!

Not even a depressingly dark theme does compensate. It´s deeper. It´s in the code. The fun while coding and accomplishing something great.
I can see it in the menues, feel it on the touchpad.
Not appreciating that.

I am so unhappy, that I even think, I have to make a negative refund, so that this unpleasent, repellent development has no excuse to stop. Thank god for donations. They empower one to much harder hitting, well-founded critique!
Just wait for it!

I´ll be back.

In the end, I get double the refund and get to keep this awesome software to boot :P

Don Ho’s refund process was sooo fast, I received it before sending it.