Vim fork announced by Drew DeVault: purist want to keep AI out of codebase

The software purist draws the line when Vim contributors start vibe-coding (generating with AI) games like Battleship running inside the beloved text editor.

Vim, one of the most popular terminal-based free text editors used by Linux/Unix professionals, has been increasingly under fire for accepting AI-generated code contributions.

Its creator, Bram Moolenaar, who maintained the project as “benevolent dictator for life,” passed away in 2023. Since then, Vim has been in the hands of the maintainer’s community led by Christian Brabandt.

Drew DeVault, a prominent open-source developer and blogger, creator of the sourcehut code hosting platform, posted a “a eulogy for VIM” and announced a “Vim Classic” fork without “the newfangled stuff.”

“I don’t think it’s cute that someone vibe coded ‘battleship’ in VimScript. I think it’s more important that we stop collectively pretending that we don’t understand how awful all of this is,” DeVault said in a blog post.

“I don’t want to use software that has slop in it. I do what I can to avoid it, and sadly, even Vim now comes under scrutiny in that effort as both Vim and NeoVim are relying on LLMs to develop the software.”

The author of free software referred to the recent release of Vim 9.2, which brought enhancements to the Vim9 scripting language. The maintainers announced that advanced AI development tools can now leverage “the maturity of Vim9 script's modern constructs.”

Moreover, to showcase this, they linked two games – Battleship and Number puzzle – generated with GitHub Copilot and run in Vim. The games aren’t bundled with Vim itself and are just demonstrations. However, that’s where DeVault had had enough.

“Vim is important to me,” DeVault explains.

“Almost every word I have ever committed to posterity, through this blog, in my code, all of the docs I’ve written, emails I’ve sent, and more, almost all of it has passed through Vim.”

The developer illustrated the story with a photo of his wrist tattooed with letters “hjkl” – the navigation keys for Vim.

DeVault blames AI for a lot of modern problems, from environmental destruction to worker exploitation, enabling propaganda, fascism, and power centralization.

The developer’s long-term maintenance fork, called Vim Classic, is available on sourcehut. It builds on an older version of Vim 8.2.0148, the one before the introduction of Vim9 Script.

While a handful of patches and changes have been backported, DeVault says little new feature development should be expected.

“I don’t have the time or energy to try to sort out all of the work on Vim9, which followed in Bram’s footsteps, and decide what stays and what goes. It seems like a useful line to draw in the sand: Vim Classic is compatible with legacy plugins, but not the newfangled stuff,” DeVault explains.

Brabandt, the current maintainer of Vim, wasn’t aware of the new fork. He told Cybernews that he can understand the reasoning behind it, but questioned the fork for choosing an outdated base.

“I can understand the reasoning, but I don't see why one would fork Vim from before Vim9 script has been merged. Vim 8.2.0148 has been released more than six years ago, and AI wasn’t as apparent back then,” the maintainer said.

Brabandt says AI makes the team more efficient, but VIM isn’t developed in a vibe-coded manner

Brabandt assures that he understands the broader concerns over AI, especially regarding environmental impact and labor conditions.

“These are valid and important points, and they are part of why I try to use AI very selectively and transparently in Vim development. And I want to stress, we are still actively encouraging people to support the poor children in Uganda via the charity Kuwasha and continue Bram’s legacy,” Brabandt said.

He questions the new VIM fork for choosing an outdated base that was released before the Vim9 script.

“I think the Vim9 script was one of the biggest features and improvements coming with Vim9. It fixes a few of the biggest community complaints about legacy Vim script: it is slow and awkward to use, so I don't understand why anyone would try to avoid it. And it explicitly encourages a clear and readable style that helps with the maintainability of larger plugins,” Brabandt said.

The maintainer explains that he started using AI more extensively earlier this year, mainly to reduce his current workload and support the ongoing development of Vim by analyzing issues, reviewing bugs, reviewing security reports, planning new features, and more.

“All of this is to help me with the work to keep up with the activity of the community, but it doesn't mean Vim is developed in an AI-vibe-coded manner,” Brabandt assures.

“A few maintainers also started contributing AI-generated patches, and the velocity with which this allows us to fix bugs is just amazing, and I see this as a nice improvement in the way we can improve Vim. It makes us more efficient.”

Brabandt assured that he’s trying to be conscious in the way they use AI for development of Vim and only uses it where it has a clear advantage.

“We have a policy to disclose the use of AI when contributing to Vim.”

Vim has grown a lot over the last decade, and the maintainer admits that some people might not need all the features that were included.

“I try to balance new features with what is a clear improvement for Vim, and certain new features have been well acknowledged (and longer wished for): Wayland support being one of them,” he said.

“It’s not an easy decision for me, and I try to involve other maintainers and the community for things that sound controversial, because I don’t want to be the decision maker. I see Vim as being a community project and try to drive it in the direction that the community demands. I am trying to follow Bram's legacy in how we develop Vim, but this is hard, and I may have made mistakes.”

Brabandt even conceded that the fork might succeed.

“There is obviously demand for a minimum classic Vim, so if our Vim does not match this demand anymore, then he may be successful with his fork of a classical Vim,” the maintainer said.

Not the first fork for the same reason

DeVault’s feelings about Vim taking a wrong direction are not an isolated occurrence. Other developers had announced their forks, too.

“EVi is a hard fork from Vim v9.1.0 (Jan 2024) to build further upon the foundations of Vim, while avoiding AI taint,” the developer using an alias “NerdNextDoor” announced a few weeks ago on Codeberg.

It was initially met with skepticism by the technology enthusiast community on Lobste.rs, with some members claiming that forks require a lot of work to keep them running. The developer responded that they’re not trying to keep it with upstream at all.

“The whole point of forking is to unmoor from whatever upstream is doing.”

DeVault’s version appears to get a lot more support, even though the developer himself had been banned a few years ago from the community for being “loudly disappointed in the entire world.”

“I trust Drew to do a good job here, and I think basing it on Vim 8.2 is a good idea. I messed around with it a bit, and it doesn't seem like the lack of Vim9 script breaks too much,” one of the most upvoted comments on Lobste.rs reads.

“I’m glad he’s doing this. I think when it comes to Vim, his taste is more aligned with my taste than the current maintainers' is,” another user posted.

“Nice to see someone taking the ‘keep it simple and stable’ path,” another highly upvoted comment reads.

However, the YCombinator’s Hacker News community disapproved of the post – users flagged it. While some users supported the values-based stance and said they would use vim-classic, many saw DeVault overreacting.

Updated on March 27th [1:50 p.m. GMT] with a statement from the maintainer of Vim.

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