Benevolent Dictator For Life or BDFL is a title given to a small number of open source software development leaders. The term originally referred only to Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language. It 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.^[1].

The term "benevolent dictator for life" was coined in 1995 to refer to Guido van Rossum.^[2][3] The title originated shortly after van Rossum joined the 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.^[2]

The term "benevolent dictator" (minus "for life") was described in Eric Raymond's Homesteading the Noosphere essay. 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 referred to as Benevolent Dictator For Life

• Guido van Rossum^[4][5]
• Mark Shuttleworth calls himself the Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator For Life, or SABDFL, and the Ubuntu community uses this name to refer to him^[6][7]
• Adrian Holovaty, for Django^[8][9]

[edit] References