Benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) is a title given to a small number of

open-source software development Open-source software development (OSSD) is the process by which open-source software, or similar software whose source code is publicly available, is developed by an open-source software project. These are software products available with its sourc ...

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 Guido van Rossum (; born 31 January 1956) is a Dutch programmer best known as the creator of the Python programming language, for which he was the " benevolent dictator for life" (BDFL) until he stepped down from the position on 12 July 20 ...

, creator of the

Python programming language Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is dynamically-typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming p ...

. Shortly after Van Rossum joined the

Corporation for National Research Initiatives The Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), based in Reston, Virginia, is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 by Robert E. Kahn as an "activities center around strategic development of network-based information technologies", in ...

, the term appeared in a follow-up mail by

Ken Manheimer Ken Manheimer has been a prominent software developer of Zope and GNU Mailman who worked for NIST, CNRI, Digital Creations and Zope Corporation, and SpiderOak. He's been listed by Guido van Rossum together with Barry Warsaw Barry may refer to: ...

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". Van Rossum announced in July 2018 that he would be stepping down as BDFL of Python without appointing a successor, effectively eliminating the title within the Python community structure. BDFL should not be confused with the more common term for open-source leaders, "benevolent dictator", which was popularized by

Eric S. Raymond Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book ''The Cathedral and the Bazaar''. He wrote a guidebook for the ...

's essay "

Homesteading the Noosphere "Homesteading the Noosphere" (abbreviated HtN) is an essay written by Eric S. Raymond about the social workings of open-source software development. It follows his previous piece "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" (1997). The essay examines issues of p ...

" (1999). Among other topics related to

hacker culture The hacker culture is a subculture of individuals who enjoy—often in collective effort—the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming the limitations of software systems or electronic hardware (mostly digital electronics), to a ...

, 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.

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References

{{notelist Free software culture and documents Computer programming folklore Software engineering folklore Dictatorship

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