Benevolent Dictator For Life or BDFL is a title given to a small number of open source software development leaders. The term was coined in 1995 to refer to Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language.[1][2] The BDFL resolves disputes or competing arguments within the community. The title originated shortly after van Rossum joined the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). It first appeared on a follow-up mail by Ken Manheimer to a meeting trying to create a semi-formal group overseeing Python development and workshops.[1]
BDFL should not be confused with the more common term for open source leaders, "benevolent dictator", which was popularized by Eric Raymond's essay Homesteading the Noosphere.[3] 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.
[edit] Examples of people sometimes so entitled
- Guido van Rossum, creator of Python[4][5]
- Larry Wall, the creator of Perl
- Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux Kernel
- Patrick Volkerding, the creator of Slackware[6]
- Mark Shuttleworth calls himself the "Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator For Life", or SABDFL, and the Ubuntu community often uses this name to refer to him[7][8]
- Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss, for Django[9][10]
- Dries Buytaert, founder and leader of the Drupal project[11][12]
- Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress[13]
- Kohsuke Kawaguchi, the creator and leader of the Hudson project[14]
[edit] References
