Benevolent dictator for life

For the political term, see Benevolent dictatorship.

Benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) is a title given to a small number of open-source software development leaders, typically project founders who retain the final say in disputes or arguments within the community. The phrase originated in 1995 with reference to Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language.^[1][2]

History

Shortly after Van Rossum joined the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, the term appeared in a follow-up mail by Ken Manheimer to a meeting trying to create a semi-formal group that would oversee Python development and workshops; this initial use included an additional joke of naming Van Rossum the "First Interim BDFL". According to Rossum, the title was most likely created by Ken Manheimer or Barry Warsaw.^[1]

In July 2018, Van Rossum announced that he would be stepping down as BDFL of Python without appointing a successor, effectively eliminating the title within the Python community structure.^[3]

Usage

BDFL should not be confused with the more common term for open-source leaders, "benevolent dictator", which was popularized by Eric S. Raymond's essay "Homesteading the Noosphere" (1999).^[4]

Among other topics related to hacker culture, Raymond elaborates on how the nature of open source forces the "dictatorship" to keep itself benevolent, since a strong disagreement can lead to the forking of the project under the rule of new leaders.^{[citation needed]}

Referent candidates

Key

†

Deceased

Name	Project	Type	Reference
Sylvain Benner	Spacemacs	Community-driven Emacs distribution	[5]
Vitalik Buterin	Ethereum	Blockchain-based cryptocurrency	[6][better source needed]
Dries Buytaert	Drupal	Content management framework	[7]
François Chollet	Keras	Deep learning framework	[8]
Evan Czaplicki	Elm	Front-end web programming language	[9][10]
Laurent Destailleur	Dolibarr ERP CRM	Software suite for Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management	[11]
David Heinemeier Hansson	Ruby on Rails	Web framework	[12]
Rich Hickey	Clojure	Programming language	[13]
Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss	Django	Web framework	[14]
Andrew Kelley	Zig	Programming language	[15][16]
Xavier Leroy	OCaml	Programming language	[17][18]
Haoyuan Li	Alluxio	Data Orchestration System	[19]
Miles Lubin	JuMP	Mathematical optimization modeling language in Julia	[20]
Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz)	Ruby	Programming language	[21]
Wes McKinney	Pandas	Python data analysis library	[22]
Gavin Mendel-Gleason[lower-alpha 1]	TerminusDB	Open-source graph database for knowledge graph representation	[23][24]
Bram Moolenaar†	Vim	Text editor	[25]
Matt Mullenweg[lower-alpha 2]	WordPress	Content management framework	[26]
Martin Odersky	Scala	Programming language	[27]
Taylor Otwell	Laravel	Web framework	[28][29]
Theo de Raadt	OpenBSD	A Unix-like operating system	[citation needed]
Arnold Robbins	Awk, Gawk	Programming language	[30]
Eugen Rochko	Mastodon	Open source, decentralized social network	[31]
Ton Roosendaal[lower-alpha 3]	Blender	3D computer graphics software	[32]
Sébastien Ros	Orchard Project	Content management system	[33]
Mark Shuttleworth[lower-alpha 4]	Ubuntu	Linux distribution	[34]
Jeremy Soller	Redox	Operating system	[35]
Don Syme[lower-alpha 5]	F#	Programming language	[36]
Linus Torvalds[lower-alpha 6]	Linux	Operating system kernel	[12][37]
José Valim	Elixir	Programming language	[38]
Pauli Virtanen	SciPy	Python library used for scientific and technical computing	[39][40]
Patrick Volkerding	Slackware	GNU/Linux distribution	[41]
Nathan Voxland	Liquibase	Database schema management	[42]
Jimmy Wales	Wikimedia Foundation	Collaborative knowledge project	[43][lower-roman 1]
Jeremy Walker	Exercism	Open-source programming education platform	[44]
Shaun Walker	DotNetNuke	Web application framework	[45]
Larry Wall	Perl	Programming language	[46]
Evan You	Vue.js	JavaScript MVVM framework for building user interfaces and single-page applications.	[citation needed]
Soumith Chintala	PyTorch	Deep learning framework	[47]
Martin Traverso, Dain Sundstrom, David Phillips	Trino	SQL query engine	[48]
Kohsuke Kawaguchi	Jenkins	Automation server	[49]
Gabor de Mooij	RedBeanPHP	Database object relational mapper	[50]
Bram Cohen	BitTorrent	Peer-to-peer file sharing protocol	[51]
Walter Bright	D (programming language)	Programming language	[citation needed]
Richie Vink	Polars	Data analysis framework	[52]
William Falcon	PyTorch Lightning	Deep learning framework	[53]
Lars Hvam	abapGit	Git client for ABAP	[54]
Sebastián Ramírez	FastAPI	Web framework for building APIs with Python	[55]
Bill Hall (gingerBill)	Odin	Programming language	[56]
Damien Elmes (dae)	Anki	Spaced repetition system	[57][58]

Organizational positions

1. CTO of TerminusDB
2. Lead Developer at the WordPress Foundation
3. Chairman of the Blender Foundation
4. Until December 2009, CEO of Canonical Ltd
5. Technical Advisor at the F# Software Foundation
6. Sponsee of the Linux Foundation. Also holds the trademark for Linux

See also

• Design by dictator

References

1. Disputed by Wales; "I am not the benevolent dictator of anything"

1. Guido van Rossum (2008-07-31). "Origin of BDFL". Artima.com. Archived from the original on 2012-07-21. Retrieved 2008-08-01.
2. "Python Creator Scripts Inside Google". eWeek. 2006-03-06. Archived from the original on 2018-08-09. Retrieved 2008-05-13.
3. Van Rossum, Guido (July 12, 2018). "Transfer of power". mail.python.org. Archived from the original on July 12, 2018. Retrieved August 9, 2018.
4. Raymond, Eric S. (2000). "Homesteading the Noosphere § Project Structures and Ownership". Eric S. Raymond's Home Page. Archived from the original on 2012-07-01. Retrieved 2008-08-01.
5. "Spacemacs COMMUNITY.org". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-08-24.
6. Pearson, Jordan (24 April 2017). "Ethereum's Boy King Is Thinking About Giving Up the Mantle". Vice. Retrieved 5 September 2023. One participant called him a benevolent dictator.
7. Fay, Randy. "How Do Open Source Communities Govern Themselves? | RandyFay.comties Govern Themselves?". randyfay.com. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
8. "Keras API Special Interest Group, Leadership". GitHub. December 21, 2021.
9. "56: Ember vs. Elm: The Showdown with Philip Poots | The Frontside Podcast". The Frontside Podcast. Archived from the original on November 16, 2018. Retrieved 2017-08-14.
10. elm-conf (2016-09-19), "Code is the Easy Part" by Evan Czaplicki, retrieved 2017-08-14
11. "Dolibarr project organization, different roles of actors".
12. Constine, Josh (December 7, 2012). "Dropbox Hires Away Google's Guido Van Rossum, The Father Of Python". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
13. "Clojure JIRA Workflow". Archived from the original on November 13, 2015. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
14. "Adrian and Jacob retiring as Django BDFLs". Adrian Holovaty. January 12, 2014. Retrieved June 14, 2015.
15. "Proposal: Create a standard process for proposals". GitHub.
16. "Interfacing with Zig, a BDFL-run Project". Loris Cro's Blog. December 10, 2021. Retrieved April 14, 2024.
17. "A History of OCaml | OCaml.org". Retrieved 2015-09-18.
18. "OCaml Infrastructure mailing list". Retrieved 2015-09-18.
19. Introducing Alluxio Open Source Project Governance ""
20. "Governance Structure: JuMP". Retrieved 2023-09-13.
21. "A Ruby Design Process". Retrieved 2016-04-17.
22. "pandas 0.20.3 documentation: Tutorials". Retrieved 2017-07-24. "Wes McKinney's (pandas BDFL) blog"
23. "TerminusDB, Twitter". May 6, 2020. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
24. "TerminusDB — what's in a name?". TerminusDB. August 21, 2019. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
25. "Why Neovim is Better than Vim". January 15, 2015. Retrieved 30 September 2015.
26. "Thesis, Automattic, and WordPress | Post Status". July 24, 2015. Retrieved 2015-07-24.
27. "Programming in Scala Leaps onto the World Stage!". Retrieved 2015-11-25.
28. "Taylor Otwell, Twitter". Taylor Otwell. October 9, 2014. Retrieved October 9, 2014.
29. "Taylor Otwell, Creator of the Laravel PHP Framework". Facebook. August 5, 2014. Retrieved August 5, 2014.
30. Robbins, Arnold (March 2014). "The GNU Project and Me: 27 Years with GNU AWK" (PDF). skeeve.com. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved August 11, 2023.
31. "Mastodon is crumbling—and many blame its creator". The Daily Dot. January 18, 2019.
32. "Developer Intro/Overview". Retrieved 20 July 2018.
33. "Orchard Project Steering Committee". Archived from the original on August 12, 2015.
34. "Ubuntu carves niche in Linux landscape". CNET. Archived from the original on 6 November 2015.
35. "CONTRIBUTING.md · master · redox-os / redox". July 8, 2023.
36. "Contributing to the F# Language and Compiler". Retrieved 29 September 2015.
37. Dee-Ann LeBlanc (31 July 2006). Linux For Dummies (7th ed.). John Wiley & Sons. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-470-04793-4.
38. "Elixir Companies". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
39. "SciPy 1.0.0". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-10-27.
40. "SciPy project governance". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-10-27.
41. "Stories of Linux: A Look at Slackware Linux". linux.com. Archived from the original on October 30, 2014. Retrieved September 21, 2014.
42. "User and Developer Community | Post Status". Retrieved 2015-08-13.
43. Chozick, Amy (June 27, 2013). "Jimmy Wales is Not an Internet Billionaire". The New York Times.
44. "Jeremy Walker on Being the BDFL of Exercism by Humans of Open Source • A podcast on Anchor". Anchor. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
45. Book: Building Websites with DotNetNuke 5, Michael Washington and Ian Lackey, Packt Publishing. Page 14 "The core team comprises individuals invited to join the team by Shaun Walker, whom they affectionately call the "Benevolent Dictator".
46. "The Art of Ballistic Programming". Archived from the original on June 17, 2013.
47. "PyTorch Governance | Maintainers — PyTorch 2.0 documentation". pytorch.org. Retrieved 2023-03-21.
48. Trino and the BDFL model https://trino.io/blog/2023/04/06/trino-bdfl-focus.html
49. Jenkins Enhancement Proposal #1: BDFL https://github.com/jenkinsci/jep/blob/master/jep/1/README.adoc#bdfl
50. RedBeanPHP index page https://redbeanphp.com/index.php?p=/welcome#sponsor
51. BitTorrent Enhancement Proposal #1: The BEP Process https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0001.html
52. "Polars - About us". 2024-04-07. Archived from the original on 2024-03-24.
53. "Lightning Governance — PyTorch Lightning 2.3.0dev documentation". lightning.ai. Retrieved 2024-04-10.
54. "Addressing the Future of ABAP: The Power of Open Source". 2024-06-06.
55. "GitHub FastAPI". 2024-07-30.
56. "Proposal Process". 2019-03-31.
57. "ankitects Github organization". GitHub. Retrieved 2024-09-14.
58. "Anki development discussion". Reddit. Retrieved 2024-09-14.