Bram Moolenaar, Creator of VIM Text Editor, Dies at 62
The open source software community mourns the loss of Bram Moolenaar, creator and lead maintainer of the VIM text editor, who passed away on August 3rd 2023 at the age of 62.
Moolenaar's death was announced on his website and social media pages by his family members. According to the statement, he had been suffering from an unspecified medical condition that progressed quickly in recent weeks leading to his death.
About Bram Moolenaar
Bram Moolenaar was born in 1961 in the Netherlands. He began his career as a software engineer in 1982 after completing his studies.
Moolenaar started working on VIM (which stands for Vi IMproved) in 1988 as a fork of the vi text editor for the Amiga computer. He was inspired by the limitations of vi, which was based on the ex editor, and wanted to add more functionality while keeping the speed of vi.
In 1991, Moolenaar released version 1.14 of VIM for the first time under a charityware license, requesting users to donate to orphans in Uganda. Over the next 3 decades, he continued developing and maintaining VIM, incorporating new features like syntax highlighting, GUI version support, plugins and autocomplete while keeping the core focus on text editing efficiency.
VIM grew to become one of the most popular text editors in the open source world, preferred by developers, sysadmins, writers and power users across operating systems. It is estimated to have hundreds of thousands if not millions of users worldwide.
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Moolenaar's Legacy with VIM
As the creator and lead maintainer of VIM, Moolenaar made several important contributions:
Creator of original VIM codebase: Moolenaar wrote the majority of the initial VIM source code and its continuing improvements over 30+ years. His technical abilities were instrumental in making VIM a powerful, flexible and extensible editor.
Release Management: He handled all major official releases of the VIM editor, ensuring stability and managing contributions from the community.
Documentation: Moolenaar authored the detailed documentation and tutor for VIM to help new users learn the unique modal editing style. His writings educated generations of users.
Leadership: As the benevolent dictator for life of the VIM project, he guided its vision and shaped its development with a careful, detail-oriented approach. Moolenaar united and led an ecosystem of volunteer developers.
Licensing: VIM's open source charityware license allowed it to be freely used, modified and distributed while funding good causes around the world. This licensing model helped drive its adoption.
Strong Ethics: Moolenaar valued doing the right thing. He thought deeply about ethics in software development and emphasized giving back to society.
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Community Reactions to Moolenaar's Passing
News of Bram Moolenaar's death led to an immense outpouring of grief and tributes across social media from the open source community:
"I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Bram Moolenaar, the brilliant mind behind VIM. His contributions to the world of text editing have been invaluable, and his legacy will continue to inspire and impact countless individuals. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family, friends, and the entire VIM community during this difficult time. May his soul rest in peace."
Many users thanked Moolenaar for creating an editor "for the rest of us", changing the way people interacted with text on computers. Developers shared how VIM improved their productivity and became an indispensable part of their toolkit over the decades.
Long-time VIM community members who knew Moolenaar personally recalled his vision, attention to detail and desire to always improve. But they also highlighted his kindness, humility and care for the users of his creation.
Several tech leaders promised that even though Moolenaar is gone, the VIM community would work together to continue his legacy with the editor he built. Tribute repositories of memories and condolences have also been started on Github.
While mourning this terrible loss, the open source community also celebrates the lasting impact Bram Moolenaar made through his life's work creating and developing the VIM editor used by millions. His technical brilliance and warm generosity will always be remembered.
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