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Benevolent dictator for life

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Title given to a small number of open-source software development leaders
For the political term, see Benevolent dictatorship.
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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

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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] In 2025, Mastodon developer Eugen Rochko stepped down, transferring ownership to a non-profit structure.[5]

Usage

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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] [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

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Key
† Deceased
Name Project Type Ref.
Sylvain Benner Spacemacs Community-driven Emacs distribution [7]
Vitalik Buterin Ethereum Blockchain-based cryptocurrency [8] [bettersourceneeded ]
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]
Ryan Cramer ProcessWire Free content management system (CMS) and framework (CMF) [59]
Salvatore Sanfilippo Redis In memory key-value database [60]
Daniel Stenberg cURL Web protocol client [61]
Werner Schweer MuseScore Studio Music notation software [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

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References

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  1. ↑ Guido van Rossum (2008年07月31日). "Origin of BDFL". Artima.com. Retrieved 2008年08月01日.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  2. ↑ "Python Creator Scripts Inside Google". eWeek . 2006年03月06日. Retrieved 2008年05月13日.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  3. ↑ CultRepo (formerly Honeypot) (2025年08月28日). Python: The Documentary | An origin story . Retrieved 2025年08月31日 – via YouTube.
  4. ↑ 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. ↑ Perez, Sarah (2025年11月18日). "Mastodon CEO steps down as the social network restructures". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2025年12月12日.
  6. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (2000). "Homesteading the Noosphere § Project Structures and Ownership". Eric S. Raymond's Home Page. Retrieved 2008年08月01日.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  7. ↑ "Spacemacs COMMUNITY.org". GitHub . Retrieved 2017年08月24日.
  8. ↑ 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. ↑ Fay, Randy. "How Do Open Source Communities Govern Themselves? | RandyFay.comties Govern Themselves?". randyfay.com. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  10. ↑ "Keras API Special Interest Group, Leadership". GitHub . December 21, 2021.
  11. ↑ "56: Ember vs. Elm: The Showdown with Philip Poots | The Frontside Podcast". The Frontside Podcast. Archived from the original on November 16, 2018. Retrieved 2017年08月14日.
  12. ↑ elm-conf (2016年09月19日), "Code is the Easy Part" by Evan Czaplicki , retrieved 2017年08月14日
  13. ↑ "Dolibarr project organization, different roles of actors".
  14. 1 2 Constine, Josh (December 7, 2012). "Dropbox Hires Away Google's Guido Van Rossum, The Father Of Python". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  15. ↑ "Clojure JIRA Workflow". Archived from the original on November 13, 2015. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  16. ↑ "Adrian and Jacob retiring as Django BDFLs". Adrian Holovaty. January 12, 2014. Retrieved June 14, 2015.
  17. ↑ "Proposal: Create a standard process for proposals". GitHub .
  18. ↑ "Interfacing with Zig, a BDFL-run Project". Loris Cro's Blog . December 10, 2021. Retrieved April 14, 2024.
  19. ↑ "A History of OCaml | OCaml.org" . Retrieved 2015年09月18日.
  20. ↑ "OCaml Infrastructure mailing list" . Retrieved 2015年09月18日.
  21. ↑ Introducing Alluxio Open Source Project Governance ""
  22. ↑ "Governance Structure: JuMP" . Retrieved 2023年09月13日.
  23. ↑ "A Ruby Design Process" . Retrieved 2016年04月17日.
  24. ↑ "pandas 0.20.3 documentation: Tutorials" . Retrieved 2017年07月24日. "Wes McKinney's (pandas BDFL) blog"
  25. ↑ "TerminusDB, Twitter". May 6, 2020. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
  26. ↑ "TerminusDB — what's in a name?". TerminusDB. August 21, 2019. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  27. ↑ "Why Neovim is Better than Vim". January 15, 2015. Retrieved 30 September 2015.
  28. ↑ "Thesis, Automattic, and WordPress | Post Status". July 24, 2015. Retrieved 2015年07月24日.
  29. ↑ "Programming in Scala Leaps onto the World Stage!" . Retrieved 2015年11月25日.
  30. ↑ "Taylor Otwell, Twitter". Taylor Otwell. October 9, 2014. Retrieved October 9, 2014.
  31. ↑ "Taylor Otwell, Creator of the Laravel PHP Framework". Facebook . August 5, 2014. Retrieved August 5, 2014.
  32. ↑ Robbins, Arnold (March 2014). "The GNU Project and Me: 27 Years with GNU AWK" (PDF). skeeve.com. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  33. ↑ "Developer Intro/Overview" . Retrieved 20 July 2018.
  34. ↑ "Orchard Project Steering Committee". Archived from the original on August 12, 2015.
  35. ↑ "Ubuntu carves niche in Linux landscape". CNET. Archived from the original on 6 November 2015.
  36. ↑ "CONTRIBUTING.md · master · redox-os / redox". July 8, 2023.
  37. ↑ "Contributing to the F# Language and Compiler". Archived from the original on 21 December 2019. Retrieved 29 September 2015.
  38. ↑ Dee-Ann LeBlanc (31 July 2006). Linux For Dummies (7th ed.). John Wiley & Sons. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-470-04793-4.
  39. ↑ "Elixir Companies". GitHub . Retrieved 2017年11月01日.
  40. ↑ "SciPy 1.0.0". GitHub . Retrieved 2017年10月27日.
  41. ↑ "SciPy project governance". GitHub . Retrieved 2017年10月27日.
  42. ↑ "Stories of Linux: A Look at Slackware Linux". linux.com. Archived from the original on October 30, 2014. Retrieved September 21, 2014.
  43. ↑ "User and Developer Community | Post Status" . Retrieved 2015年08月13日.
  44. ↑ Chozick, Amy (June 27, 2013). "Jimmy Wales is Not an Internet Billionaire". The New York Times.
  45. ↑ "Jeremy Walker on Being the BDFL of Exercism by Humans of Open Source • A podcast on Anchor". Anchor. Retrieved 2021年03月26日.
  46. ↑ Book: Building Websites with DotNetNuke 5, Michael Washington and Ian Lackey, Packt Publishing. Page 14 "The core team comprises individuals invited to join the team by Shaun Walker, whom they affectionately call the "Benevolent Dictator".
  47. ↑ "The Art of Ballistic Programming". Archived from the original on June 17, 2013.
  48. ↑ "PyTorch Governance | Maintainers — PyTorch 2.0 documentation". pytorch.org. Retrieved 2023年03月21日.
  49. ↑ Trino and the BDFL model https://trino.io/blog/2023/04/06/trino-bdfl-focus.html
  50. ↑ Jenkins Enhancement Proposal #1: BDFL https://github.com/jenkinsci/jep/blob/master/jep/1/README.adoc#bdfl
  51. ↑ RedBeanPHP index page https://redbeanphp.com/index.php?p=/welcome#sponsor
  52. ↑ BitTorrent Enhancement Proposal #1: The BEP Process https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0001.html
  53. ↑ "Polars - About us". 2024年04月07日. Archived from the original on 2024年03月24日.
  54. ↑ "Lightning Governance — PyTorch Lightning 2.3.0dev documentation". lightning.ai. Retrieved 2024年04月10日.
  55. ↑ "Addressing the Future of ABAP: The Power of Open Source". 2024年06月06日.
  56. ↑ "GitHub FastAPI". 2024年07月30日.
  57. ↑ "Proposal Process". 2019年03月31日.
  58. ↑ "ankitects Github organization". GitHub . Retrieved 2024年09月14日.
  59. ↑ ProcessWire index page https://www.processwire.com/
  60. ↑ Antirez Redis repository https://github.com/antirez/redis
  61. ↑ "curl - Governance". curl.se. Retrieved 2026年03月04日.
  62. ↑ "Meet the MuseScore Contributors". MuseScore.org (in Catalan). Retrieved 2026年07月07日.

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