411 REFERENCE · Wiktionary
BDFL
Reference material by Wiktionary contributors. This retains its source identity and is not 411 news reporting.
English
Noun
en software humorous en benevolent dictator for life.
en 2023 John Mertic Open Source Projects—Beyond Code: A blueprint for scalable and sustainable open source projects Packt Publishing Ltd 9781837633852 69 https://books.google.com/books?id=Mk-3EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA69&dq=%22the+BDFL%22&hl=&cd=4&source=gbs_api#v=onepage&q=%22the%20BDFL%22&f=false BDFL can be a type of governance that is part of a project from the onset, or it can emerge from the do-acracy form described earlier. We most often see the former: Rasmus Lerdorf with PHP, Linus Torvalds with the Linux kernel, and Guido van Rossum with Python (programming language) Python.
See also
en BOFH