this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Bram was notoriously possessive of the Vim project and consistently avoided bringing in other lead maintainers or adding widely demanded features (like async processing). Maybe that changed while I wasn't paying attention, but it had a lot to do with the very successful neovim fork. Bram eventually added an async feature but not before neovim exploded in popularity.
It's tragic to hear of Bram's passing, and at such a young age. I will be interested to see what happens to the Vim project now, in his absence.
As unseemly as it might be to talk "business" immediately after someone's death (though maybe it's not so impolite by this time), it is an interesting moment for the Vim project, which in reality is really no more without Bram and will probably continue along as one or many forks (on top of neovim that is). However, given how much of a mainstay it is, it'll be interesting to see if anyone is willing and able to pick up the project in a way that will continue this core role in the *nix ecosystem.
Bram obviously gave so much to the global community, and directly to Uganda through his persistent charity efforts, and no more need be said about what a devoted and generous person he was. We'd all truly be worse off without his contributions and I say that as a devout Emacs user.
Still, it always rubbed me wrong that his stated plan for the project was immortality.