Benevolent dictator for life

Benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) or just benevolent dictator 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.

History

The term benevolent dictator has been around since at least 1868 and its usage in computer contexts dates back to the early beginnings as can be seen in a Usenet post from 1984 where it has been used for a moderator.

Benevolent dictator for life is thought to have been first used in 1995 for Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python programming language. 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".

Eric S. Raymond's essay "Homesteading the Noosphere" (1999) also popularized the term benevolent dictator for a single decision-making open source owner or maintainer. 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. 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.

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

Referent candidates

Key
† Deceased
Name Project Type Ref.
Sylvain Benner Spacemacs Community-driven Emacs distribution
Vitalik Buterin Ethereum Blockchain-based cryptocurrency [better source needed]
Dries Buytaert Drupal Content management framework
François Chollet Keras Deep learning framework
Evan Czaplicki Elm Front-end web programming language
Laurent Destailleur Dolibarr ERP CRM Software suite for enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management
David Heinemeier Hansson Ruby on Rails Web framework
Rich Hickey Clojure Programming language
Adrian Holovaty
and Jacob Kaplan-Moss		 Django Web framework
Andrew Kelley Zig Programming language
Xavier Leroy OCaml Programming language
Haoyuan Li Alluxio Data Orchestration System
Miles Lubin JuMP Mathematical optimization modeling language in Julia
Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz) Ruby Programming language
Wes McKinney Pandas Python data analysis library
Gavin Mendel-Gleason TerminusDB Open-source graph database for knowledge graph representation
Bram Moolenaar† Vim Text editor
Matt Mullenweg WordPress Content management framework
Martin Odersky Scala Programming language
Taylor Otwell Laravel Web framework
Theo de Raadt OpenBSD A Unix-like operating system [citation needed]
Arnold Robbins Awk, Gawk Programming language
Ton Roosendaal Blender 3D computer graphics software
Sébastien Ros Orchard Project Content management system
Mark Shuttleworth Ubuntu Linux distribution
Jeremy Soller Redox Operating system
Don Syme F# Programming language
Linus Torvalds Linux Operating system kernel
José Valim Elixir Programming language
Pauli Virtanen SciPy Python library used for scientific and technical computing
Patrick Volkerding Slackware Linux distribution
Nathan Voxland Liquibase Database schema management
Jimmy Wales Wikimedia Foundation Collaborative knowledge project
Jeremy Walker Exercism Open-source programming education platform
Shaun Walker DotNetNuke Web application framework
Larry Wall Perl Programming language
Evan You Vue.js JavaScript MVVM framework for building user interfaces and single-page applications. [citation needed]
Soumith Chintala PyTorch Deep learning framework
Martin Traverso, Dain Sundstrom, David Phillips Trino SQL query engine
Kohsuke Kawaguchi Jenkins Automation server
Gabor de Mooij RedBeanPHP Database object relational mapper
Bram Cohen BitTorrent Peer-to-peer file sharing protocol
Walter Bright D (programming language) Programming language
Ritchie Vink Polars Data analysis framework
William Falcon PyTorch Lightning Deep learning framework
Lars Hvam abapGit Git client for ABAP
Sebastián Ramírez FastAPI Web framework for building APIs with Python
Bill Hall (gingerBill) Odin Programming language
Damien Elmes (dae) Anki Spaced repetition system
Ryan Cramer ProcessWire Free content management system (CMS) and framework (CMF)
Salvatore Sanfilippo Redis In memory key-value database
Daniel Stenberg cURL Web protocol client
Werner Schweer MuseScore Studio Music notation software
Paulus Schoutsen Home Assistant Home automation platform

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

References

  1. ↑ "Python Creator Scripts Inside Google". eWeek. 2006-03-06. Retrieved 2008-05-13.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  2. ↑ The London Quarterly Review. H.J.T. Tresidder. 1868.
  3. ↑ Dyer, Steve (Oct 2, 1984). "Re on the direction of net.motss". groups.google.com. Retrieved 2026-08-19. It is in this light that I recommend creating mod.motss', a newsgroup essentially identical to 'net.motss', but one in which the articles are screened by a moderator, a benevolent dictator whose only role is to ensure that the posted article conforms with the purpose stated in the first submission to 'net.motss' (copies available on request.) Sure, this is a lot of "power" given to one person, but it is bestowed by consensus. It is, in my personal view, much preferable to the anarchic situation we see here right now.
  4. ↑ Guido van Rossum (2008-07-31). "Origin of BDFL". Artima.com. Retrieved 2008-08-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  5. ↑ CultRepo (formerly Honeypot) (2025-08-28). Python: The Documentary | An origin story. Retrieved 2025-08-31 – via YouTube.
  6. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (2000). "Homesteading the Noosphere § Project Structures and Ownership". Eric S. Raymond's Home Page. Archived from the original on 30 Apr 2003. Retrieved 2008-08-01.
  7. ↑ Van Rossum, Guido (July 12, 2018). "Transfer of power". mail.python.org. Retrieved August 9, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  8. ↑ Perez, Sarah (2025-11-18). "Mastodon CEO steps down as the social network restructures". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2025-12-12.
  9. ↑ "Spacemacs COMMUNITY.org". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-08-24.
  10. ↑ 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.
  11. ↑ Fay, Randy. "How Do Open Source Communities Govern Themselves? | RandyFay.comties Govern Themselves?". randyfay.com. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  12. ↑ "Keras API Special Interest Group, Leadership". GitHub. December 21, 2021.
  13. ↑ "56: Ember vs. Elm: The Showdown with Philip Poots | The Frontside Podcast". The Frontside Podcast. Archived from the original on November 16, 2018. Retrieved 2017-08-14.
  14. ↑ elm-conf (2016-09-19), "Code is the Easy Part" by Evan Czaplicki, retrieved 2017-08-14
  15. ↑ "Dolibarr project organization, different roles of actors".
  16. 1 2 Constine, Josh (December 7, 2012). "Dropbox Hires Away Google's Guido Van Rossum, The Father Of Python". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  17. ↑ "Clojure JIRA Workflow". Archived from the original on November 13, 2015. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  18. ↑ "Adrian and Jacob retiring as Django BDFLs". Adrian Holovaty. January 12, 2014. Retrieved June 14, 2015.
  19. ↑ "Proposal: Create a standard process for proposals". GitHub.
  20. ↑ "Interfacing with Zig, a BDFL-run Project". Loris Cro's Blog. December 10, 2021. Retrieved April 14, 2024.
  21. ↑ "A History of OCaml | OCaml.org". Retrieved 2015-09-18.
  22. ↑ "OCaml Infrastructure mailing list". Retrieved 2015-09-18.
  23. ↑ Introducing Alluxio Open Source Project Governance ""
  24. ↑ "Governance Structure: JuMP". Retrieved 2023-09-13.
  25. ↑ "A Ruby Design Process". Retrieved 2016-04-17.
  26. ↑ "pandas 0.20.3 documentation: Tutorials". Retrieved 2017-07-24. "Wes McKinney's (pandas BDFL) blog"
  27. ↑ "TerminusDB, Twitter". May 6, 2020. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
  28. ↑ "TerminusDB — what's in a name?". TerminusDB. August 21, 2019. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  29. ↑ "Why Neovim is Better than Vim". January 15, 2015. Retrieved 30 September 2015.
  30. ↑ "Thesis, Automattic, and WordPress | Post Status". July 24, 2015. Retrieved 2015-07-24.
  31. ↑ "Programming in Scala Leaps onto the World Stage!". Retrieved 2015-11-25.
  32. ↑ "Taylor Otwell, Twitter". Taylor Otwell. October 9, 2014. Retrieved October 9, 2014.
  33. ↑ "Taylor Otwell, Creator of the Laravel PHP Framework". Facebook. August 5, 2014. Retrieved August 5, 2014.
  34. ↑ 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.
  35. ↑ "Developer Intro/Overview". Retrieved 20 July 2018.
  36. ↑ "Orchard Project Steering Committee". Archived from the original on August 12, 2015.
  37. ↑ "Ubuntu carves niche in Linux landscape". CNET. Archived from the original on 6 November 2015.
  38. ↑ "CONTRIBUTING.md · master · redox-os / redox". July 8, 2023.
  39. ↑ "Contributing to the F# Language and Compiler". Archived from the original on 21 December 2019. Retrieved 29 September 2015.
  40. ↑ Dee-Ann LeBlanc (31 July 2006). Linux For Dummies (7th ed.). John Wiley & Sons. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-470-04793-4.
  41. ↑ "Elixir Companies". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  42. ↑ "SciPy 1.0.0". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-10-27.
  43. ↑ "SciPy project governance". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-10-27.
  44. ↑ "Stories of Linux: A Look at Slackware Linux". linux.com. Archived from the original on October 30, 2014. Retrieved September 21, 2014.
  45. ↑ "User and Developer Community | Post Status". Retrieved 2015-08-13.
  46. ↑ Chozick, Amy (June 27, 2013). "Jimmy Wales is Not an Internet Billionaire". The New York Times.
  47. ↑ "Jeremy Walker on Being the BDFL of Exercism by Humans of Open Source • A podcast on Anchor". Anchor. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
  48. ↑ 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".
  49. ↑ "The Art of Ballistic Programming". Archived from the original on June 17, 2013.
  50. ↑ "PyTorch Governance | Maintainers — PyTorch 2.0 documentation". pytorch.org. Retrieved 2023-03-21.
  51. ↑ Trino and the BDFL model https://trino.io/blog/2023/04/06/trino-bdfl-focus.html
  52. ↑ Jenkins Enhancement Proposal #1: BDFL https://github.com/jenkinsci/jep/blob/master/jep/1/README.adoc#bdfl
  53. ↑ RedBeanPHP index page https://redbeanphp.com/index.php?p=/welcome#sponsor
  54. ↑ BitTorrent Enhancement Proposal #1: The BEP Process https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0001.html
  55. ↑ Bright, Walter (Aug 23, 2017). "D as a Better C | The D Blog". blog.dlang.org. Archived from the original on 2026-04-16. Retrieved 2026-08-19. Walter Bright is the BDFL of the D Programming Language and founder of Digital Mars
  56. ↑ "Polars - About us". 2024-04-07. Archived from the original on 2024-03-24.
  57. ↑ "Lightning Governance — PyTorch Lightning 2.3.0dev documentation". lightning.ai. Retrieved 2024-04-10.
  58. ↑ "Addressing the Future of ABAP: The Power of Open Source". 2024-06-06.
  59. ↑ "GitHub FastAPI". 2024-07-30.
  60. ↑ "Proposal Process". 2019-03-31.
  61. ↑ "ankitects Github organization". GitHub. Retrieved 2024-09-14.
  62. ↑ ProcessWire index page https://www.processwire.com/
  63. ↑ Antirez Redis repository https://github.com/antirez/redis
  64. ↑ "curl - Governance". curl.se. Retrieved 2026-03-04.
  65. ↑ "Meet the MuseScore Contributors". MuseScore.org (in Catalan). Retrieved 2026-07-07.
  66. ↑ "Paulus Schoutsen: Home Assistant concurreert met alles wat via de cloud gaat". Tweakers (in Dutch). Retrieved 2026-10-15.