Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL)

Forge Your Future with Open Source

by VM (Vicky) Brasseur  · 266pp  · 79,297 words

gone on to other things and left the project in the capable hands of other people. Sometimes a founder takes on the role Benevolent Dictator For Life, or as its more commonly known, BDFL. If the project has a BDFL, then when someone says, “The buck stops here,” the role of “here” is played by the

…

must shift to what makes the most sense for the community. While a few large project communities are able to get away with having a Benevolent Dictator for Life, even they don’t unilaterally impose their will upon the direction of the project features and instead consider the overall good to the project and

…

easy rollback mitigate the risk of fatal bugs slipping into the project. BDFL Short for Benevolent Dictator For Life. BDFLs are rare in FOSS but they do exist. For example, Guido van Rossum was the BDFL of Python and Dries Buytaert is the BDFL of Drupal. A BDFL is typically the founder of the project. They have final say

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

by Nadia Eghbal  · 3 Aug 2020  · 1,136pp  · 73,489 words

called this style “benevolent dictator,”23 which was later adapted by Guido van Rossum, author of the Python programming language, into the better-known phrase “Benevolent Dictator for Life” (BDFL), to describe authors of open source projects who retain control even as the project grows. Although the Linux Foundation reports more than 14,000 contributors

…

. Some of these transitions occur after the contributor community has reached a certain size. Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Adrian Holovaty, who authored Django, retired as BDFLs (“Benevolent Dictators for Life”) after nine years, with Jacob explaining that “the longer I observe the Django community, the more I realize that our community doesn’t need [us

Programming Python

by Mark Lutz  · 5 Jan 2011

hit by a bus?” These days, Python creator Guido van Rossum is still the ultimate arbiter of proposed Python changes. He was officially anointed the BDFL—Benevolent Dictator for Life—of Python at the first Python conference and still makes final yes and no decisions on language changes (and apart from 3.0’s deliberate

Common Knowledge?: An Ethnography of Wikipedia

by Dariusz Jemielniak  · 13 May 2014  · 312pp  · 93,504 words

a circle of senior co-developers; the Perl developers organize themselves this way. (1999/2004, pp. 101–102) Raymond possibly took the term from the “Benevolent Dictator for Life” nickname arguably given to Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python programming language (Van Rossum, 2008). In Raymond’s concept, benevolent dictatorship is quite

The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation

by Jono Bacon  · 1 Aug 2009  · 394pp  · 110,352 words

unsure, ask for help Nobody knows everything, and nobody is expected to be perfect in the Ubuntu community (except of course the SABDFL [Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life]). Asking questions avoids many problems down the road, and so questions are encouraged. Those who are asked should be responsive and helpful. However, when asking

…

merit, trust, and respect. As the project lead, and with the help of my comaintainers, I help guide the community in strategic directions. As a BDFL (benevolent dictator for life) I can veto certain decisions, or more importantly, I can make decisions when the community gets stuck. This happens, for example, when there are two

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

by Benjamin H. Bratton  · 19 Feb 2016  · 903pp  · 235,753 words

that allows for, as it sounds, an open source Stack architecture (in a delimited sense). It also claims to work without the governance of a Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL). Many Users may be surprised to learn that many of the open source software tools they use every day, perhaps without knowing it, such as

Masterminds of Programming: Conversations With the Creators of Major Programming Languages

by Federico Biancuzzi and Shane Warden  · 21 Mar 2009  · 496pp  · 174,084 words

Rossum is the creator of Python, one of the major programming languages on and off the Web. The Python community refers to him as the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life), a title that could have been taken from a Monty Python skit (but wasn’t). Guido grew up in the Netherlands and worked for a

Roads and Bridges

by Nadia Eghbal  · 139pp  · 35,022 words

now considered to be one of the most popular programming languages today.[60] Van Rossum remains the principal author of Python (also known as a benevolent dictator for life, or BDFL, among developers) and is currently employed by Dropbox, whose software relies heavily on Python.[61] Python is partially managed by the Python Software Foundation

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism

by Robin Chase  · 14 May 2015  · 330pp  · 91,805 words

, 2013, http://pando.com/2013/06/20/github-ceo-explains-why-the-company-took-so-damn-long-to-raise-venture-capital. 20. “Benevolent Dictator for Life,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life. 21. “Crypto-Currency Market Capitalizations,” http://coinmarketcap.com. 22. “Who Controls the Bitcoin Network?,” Bitcoin website, https://bitcoin.org/en/faq#who

Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software

by Scott Rosenberg  · 2 Jan 2006  · 394pp  · 118,929 words

technology. That complaint, because it was largely true, stung the most. And Kapor hoped his new project would answer it. Torvalds, who is known as Benevolent Dictator for Life of the Linux operating system, consistently exudes a calm optimism about the long-term prospects for the movement he symbolizes. “In science,” as he explained

…

over time. Not by design but maybe not entirely coincidentally, it had become an open source project largely managed by women. Kapor was still the “benevolent dictator for life,” the title he had half-jokingly accepted on the Chandler mailing list in a tip of the hat to Linus Torvalds’s use of the

Ruby by example: concepts and code

by Kevin C. Baird  · 1 Jun 2007  · 309pp  · 65,118 words

Django Book

by Matt Behrens  · 24 Jan 2015

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein  · 23 Apr 2018  · 282pp  · 81,873 words

The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results

by Andrew McAfee  · 14 Nov 2023  · 381pp  · 113,173 words