Benevolent dictator for life

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Benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) is a tongue-in-cheek title given to a small number of free and open-source software development leaders, typically project founders who retain the final say in disputes or arguments within the community. It was first used in 1995 for Guido van Rossum, the 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". The title was initially coined as "Benevolent Dictator" by Ken Manheimer; later Barry Warsaw suggested it would be "Benevolent Dictator for Life".[3]

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.[4]Template:R/superscript In 2025, Mastodon developer Eugen Rochko stepped down, transferring ownership to a non-profit structure.[5]

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).[6][<span title="Script error: No such module "decodeEncode".">clarification needed]

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] Most open source software development projects utilize distributed version control systems, in which contributors submit pull requests to the project's maintainer, who may merge or reject the submission. Other distributed copies of the software are then based on that maintainer's repo. The position of BDFL is a consequence of network effect; they become stewards of the overall project on account of being the repo that the rest of the community is subscribed to and submits changes to.

Referent candidates

Key
† Deceased
Name Project Type Template:Reference column heading
Sylvain Benner Spacemacs Community-driven Emacs distribution [7]
Vitalik Buterin Ethereum Blockchain-based cryptocurrency [8][better source needed]
Dries Buytaert Drupal Content management framework [9]
François Chollet Keras Deep learning framework [10]
Evan Czaplicki Elm Front-end web programming language [11][12]
Laurent Destailleur Dolibarr ERP CRM Software suite for enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management [13]
David Heinemeier Hansson Ruby on Rails Web framework [14]
Rich Hickey Clojure Programming language [15]
Adrian Holovaty
and Jacob Kaplan-Moss 		Django Web framework [16]
Andrew Kelley Zig Programming language [17][18]
Xavier Leroy OCaml Programming language [19][20]
Haoyuan Li Alluxio Data Orchestration System [21]
Miles Lubin JuMP Mathematical optimization modeling language in Julia [22]
Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz) Ruby Programming language [23]
Wes McKinney Pandas Python data analysis library [24]
Gavin Mendel-Gleason[a] TerminusDB Open-source graph database for knowledge graph representation [25][26]
Bram Moolenaar† Vim Text editor [27]
Matt Mullenweg[b] WordPress Content management framework [28]
Martin Odersky Scala Programming language [29]
Taylor Otwell Laravel Web framework [30][31]
Theo de Raadt OpenBSD A Unix-like operating system [citation needed]
Arnold Robbins Awk, Gawk Programming language [32]
Ton Roosendaal[c] Blender 3D computer graphics software [33]
Sébastien Ros Orchard Project Content management system [34]
Mark Shuttleworth[d] Ubuntu Linux distribution [35]
Jeremy Soller Redox Operating system [36]
Don Syme[e] F# Programming language [37]
Linus Torvalds[f] Linux Operating system kernel [14][38]
José Valim Elixir Programming language [39]
Pauli Virtanen SciPy Python library used for scientific and technical computing [40][41]
Patrick Volkerding Slackware GNU/Linux distribution [42]
Nathan Voxland Liquibase Database schema management [43]
Jimmy Wales Wikimedia Foundation Collaborative knowledge project [44][i]
Jeremy Walker Exercism Open-source programming education platform [45]
Shaun Walker DotNetNuke Web application framework [46]
Larry Wall Perl Programming language [47]
Evan You Vue.js JavaScript MVVM framework for building user interfaces and single-page applications. [citation needed]
Soumith Chintala PyTorch Deep learning framework [48]
Martin Traverso, Dain Sundstrom, David Phillips Trino SQL query engine [49]
Kohsuke Kawaguchi Jenkins Automation server [50]
Gabor de Mooij RedBeanPHP Database object relational mapper [51]
Bram Cohen BitTorrent Peer-to-peer file sharing protocol [52]
Walter Bright D (programming language) Programming language [citation needed]
Ritchie Vink Polars Data analysis framework [53]
William Falcon PyTorch Lightning Deep learning framework [54]
Lars Hvam abapGit Git client for ABAP [55]
Sebastián Ramírez FastAPI Web framework for building APIs with Python [56]
Bill Hall (gingerBill) Odin Programming language [57]
Damien Elmes (dae) Anki Spaced repetition system [58][59]
Ryan Cramer ProcessWire Free content management system (CMS) and framework (CMF) [60]
Salvatore Sanfilippo Redis In memory key-value database [61]
Daniel Stenberg cURL Web protocol client [62]

Organizational positions

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  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

References

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  2. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Python Creator Scripts Inside Google". eWeek. 2006-03-06. Retrieved 2008-05-13.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  3. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.CultRepo (formerly Honeypot) (2025-08-28). Python: The Documentary | An origin story. Retrieved 2025-08-31 – via YouTube.
  4. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Van Rossum, Guido (July 12, 2018). "Transfer of power". mail.python.org. Retrieved August 9, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  5. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Perez, Sarah (2025-11-18). "Mastodon CEO steps down as the social network restructures". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2025-12-12.
  6. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Raymond, Eric S. (2000). "Homesteading the Noosphere § Project Structures and Ownership". Eric S. Raymond's Home Page. Retrieved 2008-08-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  7. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Spacemacs COMMUNITY.org". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-08-24.
  8. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.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.
  9. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Fay, Randy. "How Do Open Source Communities Govern Themselves? | RandyFay.comties Govern Themselves?". randyfay.com. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
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