{"id":"Vim","title":"Vim License","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spdx/license-list-data/main/text/Vim.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"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.","findings":[{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"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.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"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.\"","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"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.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"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.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"The text names no legal system and no term, so cc:jurisdiction is dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual.","action":"none"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"One odrl:AssetCollection of dct:type dcmitype:Software, following MIT. The text licenses a program and its source code.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check with the axioms of dg_default returned no conflicts.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"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.","action":"applied"}],"family":"Permissive: MIT, ISC and BSD-like","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"Modelled from the SPDX plain text. dalicc:additionalClauses quotes clause II with its four conditions and its five alternatives, and clause IV, because the alternatives are the license and no duty can stand for them. The e-mail address of the maintainer is part of the quoted text."}