Vim is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface. Vim is free and open source software and is released under a license that includes some charity-ware clauses, encouraging users who enjoy the software to consider donating to children in Uganda.The license is compatible with the GNU General Public License.Although Vim was originally released for the Amiga, Vim has since been developed to be cross-platform, supporting many other platforms. In 2006, it was voted the most popular editor amongst Linux Journal readers. Bram Moolenaar began working on Vim for the Amiga computer in 1988. Moolenaar first publicly released Vim (v1.14) in 1991.

The name “Vim” is an acronym for “Vi IMproved” because Vim is an extended version of the vi editor, with many additional features designed to be helpful in editing program source code. Originally, the acronym stood for “Vi IMitation”, but that was changed with the release of Vim 2.0 in December 1993.A later comment states that the reason for changing the name was that Vim’s feature set surpassed that of vi.