Vim License

Also known as Vim, Vim License.

Commercial use: allowed
Share alike: not required
Attribution: required (keep the copyright and license notices)

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Write this as a license text (needs an account) DALICC reads the model above and writes what it permits, requires and prohibits in plain English. Without an account, the Text download above writes the model out from the vocabulary.

Canonical URI https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/Vim

Permissions

Change license from the text
Duties
- Use a compliant license from the text
Charge distribution fee from the text
Commercial use from the text
Derivative works from the text
Derive from the text
Duties
- Contribution grant back from the text
- Modification notice from the text
- Notice from the text
- Source code from the text
Display from the text
Distribute from the text
Duties
- Notice from the text
Modified works from the text
Modify from the text
Duties
- Contribution grant back from the text
- Modification notice from the text
- Notice from the text
- Source code from the text
Present from the text
Reproduce from the text

Prohibitions

This license states no prohibitions.

License-wide duties

This license states no duties that apply to the work as a whole.

What applies by default

The statements above are the library's reading of this license: each is marked with the sentence it rests on, or as a library convention where the text is not explicit. The statements below are the ones the DALICC reasoner supplies for acts the license says nothing about, from the default rules of the dependency graph it reasons with. Each one names the legal source it rests on. None of it is in the record.

Promote by default rule (adopted)

This license says nothing about Promote, and the graph applies this reading in all jurisdictions it covers: it is not permitted unless the license permits it.

A licence that says nothing about endorsement is read as not allowing it: the licence gives the licensee no right to use the licensor's name or marks in a way that states or implies that the licensor endorses the licensee or its product, while stating truthfully that a work is based on or uses the licensed work is a different act that this rule does not decide. A copyright licence grants rights in the work, and the right to use a name or a trademark is a separate right under trademark law and the protection of names, which a silent copyright licence does not pass on. Combining a licence that is silent about endorsement with one that permits it shows a conflict marked as coming from this rule.

Basis Trademark and name rights are separate from copyright: Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 article 9 lets the proprietor of an EU trade mark prevent all third parties not having his consent from using the sign in the course of trade, and Directive (EU) 2015/2436 article 10, 15 U.S.C. 1114 and 1125(a), section 12 BGB and section 43 ABGB protect marks and names in the same way. The library's evidence is Creative Commons 4.0 section 2(b)(2): Patent and trademark rights are not licensed under this Public License. A copyright licence that is silent grants no right to use the licensor's name or marks to suggest endorsement (Worldwide)

Clauses

Additional clauses

II) It is allowed to distribute a modified (or extended) version of Vim, including executables and/or source code, when the following four conditions are met: 1) This license text must be included unmodified. 2) The modified Vim must be distributed in one of the following five ways: a) If you make changes to Vim yourself, you must clearly describe in the distribution how to contact you. When the maintainer asks you (in any way) for a copy of the modified Vim you distributed, you must make your changes, including source code, available to the maintainer without fee. The maintainer reserves the right to include your changes in the official version of Vim. What the maintainer will do with your changes and under what license they will be distributed is negotiable. If there has been no negotiation then this license, or a later version, also applies to your changes. The current maintainer is Bram Moolenaar <Bram@vim.org>. If this changes it will be announced in appropriate places (most likely vim.sf.net, www.vim.org and/or comp.editors). When it is completely impossible to contact the maintainer, the obligation to send him your changes ceases. Once the maintainer has confirmed that he has received your changes they will not have to be sent again. b) If you have received a modified Vim that was distributed as mentioned under a) you are allowed to further distribute it unmodified, as mentioned at I). If you make additional changes the text under a) applies to those changes. c) Provide all the changes, including source code, with every copy of the modified Vim you distribute. This may be done in the form of a context diff. You can choose what license to use for new code you add. The changes and their license must not restrict others from making their own changes to the official version of Vim. d) When you have a modified Vim which includes changes as mentioned under c), you can distribute it without the source code for the changes if the following three conditions are met: - The license that applies to the changes permits you to distribute the changes to the Vim maintainer without fee or restriction, and permits the Vim maintainer to include the changes in the official version of Vim without fee or restriction. - You keep the changes for at least three years after last distributing the corresponding modified Vim. When the maintainer or someone who you distributed the modified Vim to asks you (in any way) for the changes within this period, you must make them available to him. - You clearly describe in the distribution how to contact you. This contact information must remain valid for at least three years after last distributing the corresponding modified Vim, or as long as possible. e) When the GNU General Public License (GPL) applies to the changes, you can distribute the modified Vim under the GNU GPL version 2 or any later version. 3) A message must be added, at least in the output of the ":version" command and in the intro screen, such that the user of the modified Vim is able to see that it was modified. When distributing as mentioned under 2)e) adding the message is only required for as far as this does not conflict with the license used for the changes. 4) The contact information as required under 2)a) and 2)d) must not be removed or changed, except that the person himself can make corrections. IV) It is not allowed to remove this license from the distribution of the Vim sources, parts of it or from a modified version. You may use this license for previous Vim releases instead of the license that they came with, at your option.

Info

Target asset types: Software
Region / jurisdiction: Worldwide
Validity: Perpetual
Source: https://spdx.org/licenses/Vim.html
Legal code: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/uganda.html
This description is published under: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
SPDX identifier: Vim on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier: Vim

This record is published under CC BY 4.0. Credit it as: DALICC License Library, DALICC - Verein zur Förderung der Rechtssicherheit in der Datenbewirtschaftung, https://dalicc.net, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The license it describes belongs to its publisher.

Use this license

Everything below is generated from this record. Replace the example address with the address of your own work.

JSON sidecar

{
  "license-uri": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/Vim",
  "license-title": "Vim License",
  "spdx-id": "Vim",
  "asset": null,
  "generated-by": "DALICC"
}

RDF, Turtle

@prefix cc: <http://creativecommons.org/ns#> .

<https://example.org/my-work>
    cc:license <https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/Vim> .

RDF, JSON-LD

{
  "@context": {
    "cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
  },
  "@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
  "cc:license": {
    "@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/Vim"
  }
}

This license carries no attribution duty, so no credit line is offered here.

Badge

Markdown

[![License: Vim License](https://dalicc.net/license-library/Vim/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/Vim)

HTML

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/Vim"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/Vim/badge.svg" alt="License: Vim License"></a>

Review

Written from the license text by: Giray Havur
Written on: 2026-09-15
Second review: not yet done
Record changed since this review: yes (version 2, 2026-09-24)
Findings: 10 recorded, 6 applied to the record, 0 proposed

The record models the Vim license. Distributing unmodified copies is unrestricted as long as the license text travels with them. Distributing a modified version is allowed under four conditions: the license text unmodified, one of five ways of making the changes available (all of which end in the maintainer being able to get the source), a message telling the user that the version was modified, and intact contact information. Those four conditions are modelled as cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode and dalicc:modificationNotice duties on modify and derive, and quoted in full because the five alternatives cannot be expressed otherwise.

10 findings

major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

Clause I reads: "There are no restrictions on distributing unmodified copies of Vim except that they must include this license text." Clause II allows distributing a modified or extended version under four conditions. The record permits reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, commercial use, derivative works, modified works and the distribution fee.
major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

cc:Notice on distribute, modify and derive, from condition 1. cc:SourceCode on modify and derive: every one of the five ways of distributing a modified Vim under condition 2 ends in the changes, including source code, being made available, either to the maintainer or with every copy. dalicc:modificationNotice on modify and derive, from condition 3, which requires "A message must be added, at least in the output of the ":version" command and in the intro screen, such that the user of the modified Vim is able to see that it was modified."
major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

Clause IV reads: "It is not allowed to remove this license from the distribution of the Vim sources, parts of it or from a modified version." dalicc:ChangeLicense is therefore prohibited. Option 2e, which allows a modified Vim to be distributed under the GNU GPL version 2 or later when the GPL applies to the changes, is a narrow exception to that prohibition and is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses rather than modelled, because the model cannot express a conditional permission to relicense.
minor Rubric 6 dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer applied

The Vim license carries no warranty disclaimer and no liability clause, so neither field is written. The Vim distribution puts its disclaimer elsewhere in the uganda.txt help file, outside the license proper.
gap Rubric 8 dalicc:additionalClauses none

Two clauses have no term. The maintainer clause (the maintainer may ask for the changes and may include them in the official version, and the license of those changes is negotiable) is a grant-back like the one in EUDatagrid; the same proposed term dalicc:contributionGrantBack would carry it. The three-year retention duty under option 2d has no term either; it is quoted.
info Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction none

The text names no legal system and no term, so cc:jurisdiction is dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual.
info Rubric 2 odrl:target applied

One odrl:AssetCollection of dct:type dcmitype:Software, following MIT. The text licenses a program and its source code.
info Rubric 9 record none

The consistency check with the axioms of dg_default returned no conflicts.
info Rubric 10 record none

This is the only record of the review group that is not OSI approved; it comes from the choosealicense.com list. Its duty shape is closer to the GNU records than to the permissive ones, but there is no license-wide cc:ShareAlike duty: condition 2c lets the author of a change choose the license for the new code.
major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

Library convention 15: a licence that asks for no reciprocity and no source code asks only that the notice travels with the copy, which is a duty on the acts it governs and not a bar on putting the copy under other terms. dalicc:ChangeLicense is therefore a permission here, and the prohibition the earlier reading wrote is removed. The text reads: "Vim may also be distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or any later version. ... It is allowed to distribute a modified (or extended) version of Vim ... when the following four conditions are met: 1) This license text must be included unmodified." The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.

Report an issue The review record as JSON The review checks the model against the license text. It is not legal advice.

History

This license model has 2 versions. Version 2 is the one served today; every earlier version keeps its own address, so a conclusion drawn from one of them can still be checked against it.

Version 2 current2026-09-24 Giray Havur

The changes since version 1 recorded which sentence of the text each statement rests on and named the license the record itself is published under.

View version 2 JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML
4 changes
- changed permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]
  
  was permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]
  
  Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "IV) It is not allowed to remove this license from the distribution of the Vim sources, parts of it or from a modified version."
- changed permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode, dalicc:contributionGrantBack, dalicc:modificationNotice]
  
  was permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode, dalicc:contributionGrantBack, dalicc:modificationNotice]
  
  Manual edit Its duty dalicc:modificationNotice quotes "A message must be added, at least in the output of the ":version" command and in the intro screen, such that the user of the modified Vim is able to see that it was modified."
- changed permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode, dalicc:contributionGrantBack, dalicc:modificationNotice]
  
  was permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode, dalicc:contributionGrantBack, dalicc:modificationNotice]
  
  Manual edit Its duty dalicc:modificationNotice quotes "A message must be added, at least in the output of the ":version" command and in the intro screen, such that the user of the modified Vim is able to see that it was modified."
- added dct:license <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>
  
  Manual edit Every record is published under CC BY 4.0. cc:license names the record DALICC keeps of that licence; dct:license now names it by the address Creative Commons publishes it at, so that a consumer matching the canonical IRI finds it.
Version 1

Created from the license text on 2026-09-15 (Permissive: MIT, ISC and BSD-like).

View version 1 JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML

Every change names the reason behind it: a finding of the content review, one of its library-wide decisions, the metadata that review wrote onto every record, or a hand edit. None of it is legal advice.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. What a license means is decided by its text; ask a legal advisor before you rely on it.