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Comment by srik | Hacker News Reader

> For over 30 years, Vim has been "Charityware," supporting children in Kibaale, Uganda. Following the passing of Bram Moolenaar, the ICCF Holland foundation was dissolved […] and its remaining funds were transferred to ensure continued support for the Kibaale project. […] Vim remains Charityware. We encourage users to continue supporting the needy children in Uganda through this new transition.

I settled on vim for its technical merits but Bram using his goodwill to fund a charity like this for so long always made me feel good about my choice.

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I used to work for a large enterprise, and tried to get vim ‘approved’ for internal use. I remember this charityware clause caused our legal department to get tied up in all sorts of arguments about how we could be opening ourselves to liability if we used it without donating. It was my first lesson in navigating large company processes.

In the end I just kept quiet about the fact that it ships in all the Linux package repos.

(Just to be clear, I fully support what Bram did here)

“Let’s spend thousands of dollars on lawyers to avoid donating to a good cause”. Large corporations can be so ridiculous.

Big companies can be incredibly penny wise and pound foolish because their beancounters make them obsess over the wrong metrics. My current company has spent the last year cost cutting every single way to stay afloat and now you need a chain of approvals up the management ladder with detailed explanation for every paperclip you want purchase.

I can't prove it, but I am willing to bet my entire salary that the costs of all the new extra bureaucratic overhead introduced for small purchases, nullified or even exceeded all their savings, when the remaining engineers and managers paid six figures have to spend more of their time writing, reviewing and approving paperclip orders instead of you know, running the company, fulfilling customer demands and innovating.

I'm pretty new to this, but I have a feeling these are all the signs of a company it's worth jumping ship from ASAP as there's no chance of things improving back from this. Sure, AMD managed to turn the ship around with cost cutting, but our CEO is not Lisa Su, he's a boomer who cuts where the clueless $BIG_4 consultants tell him to cut, and big_4 doesn't care about innovation or the company being relevant in 10 years, they care about showing some immediate results/positive cash to justify their outrageous rates.

And they're probably feeling the need to pinch because they are moving slow and falling out of relevance.

When you're being outcompeted and outmaneuvered it's important to slow down and make sure you save a few dollars wherever possible, apparently.

You write "wherever possible", but: Have you ever seen the beancounting itself having been under scrutiny?

I'd wager a big part of it is also the same politics based asymmetry that's visible everywhere; like nobody ever got fired for buying IBM or people only get credit for managing a crisis, not preventing it in the first place.

Curious why you tried to get it approved in the first place if it comes with Linux?

Many larger corporations strictly control what software is available and allowed to be installed.

On Linux, this is commonly accomplished using Red Hat Satellite [1], although many other tools are also available to use instead.

Getting approval to install something like Vim can literally take months of effort and arguing.

[1] https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_satellite/6...

I worked at a place like this and we had a software registry, where if you had installed something and it wasn't on the registry somebody would start sending you nasty emails. This kind of thing would happen all the time: maybe the Linux machines weren't in the scans, or anything that came with the OS was whitelisted.

But if you wanted to install it separately on a computer that didn't have it already, then you'd need to get it “approved.”

  > maybe the Linux machines weren't in the scans

Honest question, how would you actually detect this? I mean I understand using the package manager install (and that's easy for them to control) but building from source and doing a local install (i.e. no `sudo make install`)? Everything is a file. How would you differentiate without massive amounts of false positives?

Even if it is your own work computer?

if the computer is provided for work, by the company you work for, it is not "yours"

limitations on what you can install on such machines can be quite draconian, including forbidding anything that IT Security and similar departments may not like.

I meant the work laptop you are given through working as a SWE. Are you referring to jobs in IT?

And are you allowed to use your own personal computer (laptop)?

If not, and you have to work on what you have been given, why are people OK with it[1]? In the case of IT jobs?

I cannot imagine being productive without my OS, WM, IDE, configurations and whatnot.

I did work on a desktop in an office before, using their software and it was awful. I could have automated the whole damn thing at home. It was the tax office and obviously I understand why I cannot use their software at home, but for an IT job?

[1] Stupid question, people tolerate much more than this, incl. not getting paid for overtime, being worked to death without a break every day of the week, etc.

>I meant the work laptop you are given through working as a SWE.

Everywhere i've worked, i was not "given" a computer anymore than I was given a desk, a chair or a network connection. Perhaps "provided" would be better.

> And are you allowed to use your own personal computer (laptop)?

Never have been, and never have wanted to be.

>why are people OK with it

It's industry SOP, and people pay you to work that way.

> I cannot imagine being productive without my OS, WM, IDE, configurations and whatnot.

You need to improve your imaginative powers, and your technical knowledge.

I don't get where your surprise comes from. Of course companies have the last word on what tools you are allowed/obliged to use when you're on duty. Uniforms, vehicles, why not software?

> I cannot imagine being productive without my OS, WM, IDE, configurations and whatnot.

This is a dream. I hate Windows but, everywhere I worked, Windows was the OS.

One has to adapt to feed a family.

I agree. Unfortunately so. That said, for SWE jobs, it sounds like a nightmare.

Do I understand it correctly, but people donating to Vim, presumably for the support of the software, have their donations passed along to a charity supporting children in Uganda?

Bram started giving 100% after getting hired full time by Google, I believe, which continued on. There is an update on the Vim homepage now about it stopping, though I find the wording a bit confusing... I think they are dissolving the charity but still sending donations to Uganda? I feel a bit dumb for not understanding it but you can read the update on https://www.vim.org/. Unfortunately they don't have target links for dates, it's the [2025-10-28] update.

The OP covers this question at the bottom; donations still go to the same people in Uganda, iiuc.

Oh right... doi. Thanks.

I wanted to understand it too, so I clicked on the donate button and was greeted by this message: 'All donations are directed toward a good cause: helping children in Uganda. This charity is personally recommended by Vim’s creator. Funds are used to support a children's center in southern Uganda, providing food, education, and health care to communities affected by AIDS.'

It's not their fault if donors don't read what they're donating for. This reminds me of people feeling scammed after donating to Mozilla.

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