The classic vi editor, born in 1976 when Bill Joy grew frustrated with ed, has finally been released under a BSD‑style license. For two decades the code sat behind a commercial Unix source license until Caldera lifted the restriction in January 2002. The release lets developers explore the ancestor of Vim.

At roughly 160 kB on i386, the binary remains tiny compared with modern clones. It preserves the original visual mode, line commands and terminal control but omits multiple undo, split windows or syntax highlighting. The port adds UTF‑8 and other multibyte charset support, plus a handful of POSIX‑2 features that appeared in later System V releases.

Developers can fetch the current 050325 release from SourceForge or follow CVS updates with anonymous login. The repository excludes libuxre and regexp.h, which reside in the Heirloom Toolchest and must be copied from an earlier archive before building. Comprehensive README, man pages and a tutorial guide ease integration into contemporary Unix environments, and supports modern POSIX shells, making it viable for scripting workflows.