It isn't really an "old" version of Nvi by any means - the development went in a different direction. OpenBSD's vi has been developed mostly independently since

It isn't really an "old" version of Nvi by any means - the development went in a different direction. OpenBSD's vi has been developed mostly independently since being imported back in 1997. The documentation has been updated to explain the rationale - see https://github.com/johnsonjh/OpenVi#why https://github.com/johnsonjh/OpenVi#why In the 25 years since the "fork", OpenBSD vi has diverged significantly from Nvi1 (as Nvi2 has diverged from Nvi1 as well). It has grown much smaller and more compact - one might argue more focused. Much of the code has been simplified and many features removed, rather than added. Still, it has adopted features and taken some fixes back from Nvi1/Nvi2 versions and other variants, such as adopting support for expandtab from NetBSD's variant. You can get a good idea of the history of this particular fork by reviewing the ChangeLog at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/johnsonjh/OpenVi/master/ChangeLog https://raw.githubusercontent.com/johnsonjh/OpenVi/master/Ch... where the OpenBSD changes begin in 1997.