Bram Moolenaar was Vim’s creator/maintainer/benevolent-dictator for life. Early this morning his family shared sad news on the Vim-announce Google Group. “It is with a heavy heart that we have to inform you that Bram Moolenaar passed away on 3 August 2023.” Moolenaar was 62 years old, and died from “a medical condition that progressed quickly over the last few weeks.”
“Bram dedicated a large part of his life to VIM and he was very proud of the VIM community that you are all part of.”
Anyone who’s used Vim has seen evidence of Moolenaar’s generosity. “Vim is Charityware,” Moolenaar wrote in its pioneering license. “You can use and copy it as much as you like, but you are encouraged to make a donation for needy children in Uganda.” Moolenaar pioneered the concept of charityware decades ago, and also helped to popularize its adoption. To this day Vim users can still view the license by typing the command :help Uganda or :help ICCF. And Vim’s sponsor FAQ notes that “Each registered Vim user and sponsor who donates at least 10 euro will be able to vote for new features.”
Moolenaar’s personal web site also includes photos from his travels around the world, and YouTube has some videos of talks and interviews with Moolenaar.
He was still committing changes to Vim up until a month ago.
In the comments below long-time Slashdot reader bads shares a link to a post from long-time Vim contributor Christian Brabandt :
Bram was a great leader to the Vim community and I really enjoyed working with him over the past years, since I became involved with the development of Vim almost 20 years ago.
Bram was of great inspiration in creating a great community, helping people with his charity and he was a great mentor. And now he left too soon. We lost a great leader and I regret never having met him in person.
However to all of the community: I will continue and I hope all of the other contributors will
also keep up the good work. I do have access to the Vim homepage and the Vim organization (not sure if all the rights, but I am sure we will work on the details in the near future…) I hope
together we will be able to continue
successfully.
