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[a]	TerminusDB	Open-source graph database for knowledge graph representation	[23][24]
Bram Moolenaar†	Vim	Text editor	[25]
Matt Mullenweg[b]	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[c]	Blender	3D computer graphics software	[32]
Sébastien Ros	Orchard Project	Content management system	[33]
Mark Shuttleworth[d]	Ubuntu	Linux distribution	[34]
Jeremy Soller	Redox	Operating system	[35]
Don Syme[e]	F#	Programming language	[36]
Linus Torvalds[f]	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][i]
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]
Ritchie 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. CEO of Canonical Ltd. until December 2009, again since July 2017
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