Benevolent Dictator for Life

Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL) is the informal, slightly tongue-in-cheek title given to a respected individual in the open source development community who sets general directions and makes final calls in certain situations within the scope of a given project. The BDFL is a tacit acknowledgement that communal, consensus-based decision making within the open source community occasionally runs up against obstacles, in which case a single authoritative voice can be useful. That BDFLs survive and flourish in these otherwise anarchism contexts is attributed to their personal charisma and their reluctance to wield their power except in rare moments.

Of course, a project coordinator cannot really be anything like a dictator in the sense that he or she ultimately cannot enforce a decision, since a project fork (software) is always possible.

Not all, or even most, open source projects have a BDFL.

The title is a play on the concept of a benevolent dictator and a president for life.

=List of Benevolent Dictators for Life=

Blender (program)

Ton Roosendaal

Drupal content management framework

Dries Buytaert

Linux kernel

Linus Torvalds, explicitly recognising the benevolent dictator epithet, e.g. in the [http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/aug2004/tc20040818_1593.htmtc interview published August 18, 2004 in Business Week]

Mad Penguin, Popular online Linux magazine known for its raw take on OSS.

Adam Doxtater, who was [http://os.newsforge.com/article.plsid=05/01/26/1452249&tid=2&tid=31 interviewed] by [http://www.newsforge.com NewsForge] on February 03, 2005.

OpenBSD

Theo de Raadt

Perl programming language

Larry Wall

PHP programming language

Rasmus Lerdorf

Python programming language

Guido van Rossum, known for his conservatism in changing Python. Very little changes between Python versions, and what does change tends to be considered and discussed for months or years in advance.

ReiserFS

Hans Reiser

Ruby programming language

Yukihiro Matsumoto

Samba software

Andrew Tridgell

Slackware

Patrick Volkerding

TTDPatch

Josef Drexler

Ubuntu Linux

Mark Shuttleworth, often referred to as the SABDFL or sabdfl

Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales, who however is not convinced he can be qualified as a benevolent dictator since Wikis require less centralized management than typical software projects.

Wine (software), the Open source implementation of the Microsoft Windows API

Alexandre Julliard

WordPress

Matt Mullenweg

=See also=

Coordinatorism

Digital Revolution

New class

Social class

Technocrat

Technocracy (bureaucratic)