Benevolent dictator for life

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.