6 ms·

> I don’t believe that the “BDFL” (benevolent dictator for life) model is healthy for a person or a project It's interesting that the best projects have BDFLs,

> I don’t believe that the “BDFL” (benevolent dictator for life) model is healthy for a person or a project It's interesting that the best projects have BDFLs, and that the best BDFLs are skeptical of their own power.

riwsky 2y ago
Remember when they tried to king George Washington?
groby_b 2y ago
The only people worth having in power are the ones that don't want the power. This extends well beyond OSS projects.
darby_nine 2y ago
I don't think this is true. Python had a BDFL and it didn't seem to benefit much from it. I'm not sure what other projects this attitude draws from. Off-hand I'd guess it causes less drama but no appreciable increase of quality, just like other forms of bureaucracy. Meanwhile there's entire landfills of failed projects with single owners who couldn't bend enough. We just don't find this worth discussing. Of course this won't happen, but a man can dream.
- anamexis 2y ago
  Linux/Linus Torvalds stands out as another notable BDFL.
  - gunapologist99 2y ago
    And Daniel Robbins at Gentoo, who recently (and sadly) stepped down from Funtoo as well.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    I'm not intimate with Linux as a project, but this is an attractive argument for it. Unfortunately my main experiences with Torvalds are motivated by his chewing out people on mailing lists for something stupid they said rather than fending off varied interests, which makes him look far more petty than competent.
    - arp242 2y ago
      Only those instances make the news. And then get repeated time and time again. It's a super-biased view not at all representative of his day-to-day behaviour. Also I've never seen Torvalds "chewing out people on mailing lists for something stupid they said", it's always been someone breaking something or something along those lines. That is: doing stupid. And it's also experienced maintainers Torvalds feels should have know better. You can like or dislike Torvalds' style, but this little student from Finland created the world's most successful open source project, so I think he's probably doing one or two things right. He may not be perfect, but being hung up over a few incidents over a 30-year time period is perhaps not too brilliant, and insinuating incompetence over this is quite the take. Imagine every outburst you have is public and pointed to for years to come.
      - Capricorn2481 2y ago
        > it's always been someone breaking something or something along those lines Not only is this a complete lie, but God forbid there's a process in place to catch these things instead of verbally abusing your coworkers for making mistakes, which Linus has done himself. > Imagine every outburst you have is public and pointed to for years to come You may be surprised to learn that the rest of us don't talk to anyone like this. > but being hung up over a few incidents over a 30-year time period That's a great way to make it sound old but he actually gets angrier as time goes on. https://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html https://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html
        lakdna 2y ago
        > You may be surprised to learn that the rest of us don't talk to anyone like this. The moral superiority is misplaced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41017195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41017195 But I am not surprised. CoC proponents universally do the same as the people they criticize. Only the application of rules is selective.
        Capricorn2481 2y ago
- SatvikBeri 2y ago
  Here are some other projects that benefited from BDFLs in my opinion: * Keras * Ruby * Clojure * Zig * OCaml * Vim * Elixir I think all of these have ended up being unusually coherent. I may not agree with their design philosophy, but there clearly is one.
  - dgb23 2y ago
    A perhaps important clarification: Many of those, including Linux as far as I know, simply started as projects that were driven by single authors with a strong vision and remarkable diligence. Then people flocked to those projects, but with the understanding and appreciation of that vision. I don’t think any of them wanted to be BDFLs for the sake of power. They were the original authors and _made_ something useful. I don’t think any of them took over an existing project and declared themselves dictators. Ironically they all would be way too opinionated to do so.
  - dash2 2y ago
    Conversely, projects without clear leadership include rust (recently) and R, and I think they suffer for it. A very widespread system for organising people is to have a single responsible decision-maker, supported, monitored and advised by a committee. We see that through politics and business, and a lot of the best open source projects seem to do the same thing.
    - gpderetta 2y ago
      IMO C++ would have benefitted from having a BDFL for a bit longer as well.
  - kovac 2y ago
    Linux, OpenBSD? Perhaps to an extent Mutt too.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    But php, one of the most notoriously chaotic mainstream languages, has a bdfl. And lua, arguably more disciplined than all of the ones you listed, has not.
- vbezhenar 2y ago
  Python became #1 language in the world. Which factors lead to this success is debatable, but leadership role can't be dismissed.
carapace 2y ago
The whole idea is a joke, it's right there in the name. It was a recognition of the "facts on the ground" of GvR's role as the creator of Python, it was never seriously meant as a principle of project management. It's descriptive not prescriptive, eh? The idea got reified all out of hand.
- rsc 2y ago
  The wording may be a joke but the concept is real and widely used.
  - carapace 2y ago
    Yes, but only by fools.
saghm 2y ago
Without taking a stand on the first half of that, I don't think it's particularly surprising that the best BDFLs are skeptical of their power. I'd argue the main benefit of having a single person with the power to make a unilateral decision is that it provides a way around the gridlock that tends to occur whenever there are a wide variety of stakeholders involved;. a project whose leader feels warranted to overrule decisions that have a strong consensus is a lot less likely to build up a community to the point that anyone is aware of the project.
knighthack 2y ago
I've noticed: competent people who aren't interested in leadership tend to make the best leaders. As compared to people who want to be leaders, for the sake of being known as a 'leader', but have neither the competency nor accountability to be leaders.
- singron 2y ago
  As long as they aren't so disinterested that they become absentee leaders. It's rare for huge successful projects you've heard of, but I think the typical project is more likely to have this problem, although maybe it's just incompetence too.
- zanellato19 2y ago
  I've seen this sentiment repeated here and I completely disagree. The best leaders are interested in being leaders for the betterment of their team/community, not for the clout. But people who are pushed to be leaders without being interested in that, they tend to suck and make life miserable for everyone else. Leadership is a skill, if you treat it differently, you will suck at it.

riwsky 2y ago

Remember when they tried to king George Washington?

groby_b 2y ago

The only people worth having in power are the ones that don't want the power. This extends well beyond OSS projects.

darby_nine 2y ago

I don't think this is true. Python had a BDFL and it didn't seem to benefit much from it. I'm not sure what other projects this attitude draws from. Off-hand I'd guess it causes less drama but no appreciable increase of quality, just like other forms of bureaucracy. Meanwhile there's entire landfills of failed projects with single owners who couldn't bend enough. We just don't find this worth discussing. Of course this won't happen, but a man can dream.

anamexis 2y ago
Linux/Linus Torvalds stands out as another notable BDFL.
- gunapologist99 2y ago
  And Daniel Robbins at Gentoo, who recently (and sadly) stepped down from Funtoo as well.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  I'm not intimate with Linux as a project, but this is an attractive argument for it. Unfortunately my main experiences with Torvalds are motivated by his chewing out people on mailing lists for something stupid they said rather than fending off varied interests, which makes him look far more petty than competent.
  - arp242 2y ago
    Only those instances make the news. And then get repeated time and time again. It's a super-biased view not at all representative of his day-to-day behaviour. Also I've never seen Torvalds "chewing out people on mailing lists for something stupid they said", it's always been someone breaking something or something along those lines. That is: doing stupid. And it's also experienced maintainers Torvalds feels should have know better. You can like or dislike Torvalds' style, but this little student from Finland created the world's most successful open source project, so I think he's probably doing one or two things right. He may not be perfect, but being hung up over a few incidents over a 30-year time period is perhaps not too brilliant, and insinuating incompetence over this is quite the take. Imagine every outburst you have is public and pointed to for years to come.
    - Capricorn2481 2y ago
      > it's always been someone breaking something or something along those lines Not only is this a complete lie, but God forbid there's a process in place to catch these things instead of verbally abusing your coworkers for making mistakes, which Linus has done himself. > Imagine every outburst you have is public and pointed to for years to come You may be surprised to learn that the rest of us don't talk to anyone like this. > but being hung up over a few incidents over a 30-year time period That's a great way to make it sound old but he actually gets angrier as time goes on. https://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html https://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html
      - lakdna 2y ago
        > You may be surprised to learn that the rest of us don't talk to anyone like this. The moral superiority is misplaced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41017195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41017195 But I am not surprised. CoC proponents universally do the same as the people they criticize. Only the application of rules is selective.
        Capricorn2481 2y ago
SatvikBeri 2y ago
Here are some other projects that benefited from BDFLs in my opinion: * Keras * Ruby * Clojure * Zig * OCaml * Vim * Elixir I think all of these have ended up being unusually coherent. I may not agree with their design philosophy, but there clearly is one.
- dgb23 2y ago
  A perhaps important clarification: Many of those, including Linux as far as I know, simply started as projects that were driven by single authors with a strong vision and remarkable diligence. Then people flocked to those projects, but with the understanding and appreciation of that vision. I don’t think any of them wanted to be BDFLs for the sake of power. They were the original authors and _made_ something useful. I don’t think any of them took over an existing project and declared themselves dictators. Ironically they all would be way too opinionated to do so.
- dash2 2y ago
  Conversely, projects without clear leadership include rust (recently) and R, and I think they suffer for it. A very widespread system for organising people is to have a single responsible decision-maker, supported, monitored and advised by a committee. We see that through politics and business, and a lot of the best open source projects seem to do the same thing.
  - gpderetta 2y ago
    IMO C++ would have benefitted from having a BDFL for a bit longer as well.
- kovac 2y ago
  Linux, OpenBSD? Perhaps to an extent Mutt too.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  But php, one of the most notoriously chaotic mainstream languages, has a bdfl. And lua, arguably more disciplined than all of the ones you listed, has not.
vbezhenar 2y ago
Python became #1 language in the world. Which factors lead to this success is debatable, but leadership role can't be dismissed.

carapace 2y ago

The whole idea is a joke, it's right there in the name. It was a recognition of the "facts on the ground" of GvR's role as the creator of Python, it was never seriously meant as a principle of project management. It's descriptive not prescriptive, eh? The idea got reified all out of hand.

rsc 2y ago
The wording may be a joke but the concept is real and widely used.
- carapace 2y ago
  Yes, but only by fools.

saghm 2y ago

Without taking a stand on the first half of that, I don't think it's particularly surprising that the best BDFLs are skeptical of their power. I'd argue the main benefit of having a single person with the power to make a unilateral decision is that it provides a way around the gridlock that tends to occur whenever there are a wide variety of stakeholders involved;. a project whose leader feels warranted to overrule decisions that have a strong consensus is a lot less likely to build up a community to the point that anyone is aware of the project.

knighthack 2y ago

I've noticed: competent people who aren't interested in leadership tend to make the best leaders. As compared to people who want to be leaders, for the sake of being known as a 'leader', but have neither the competency nor accountability to be leaders.

singron 2y ago
As long as they aren't so disinterested that they become absentee leaders. It's rare for huge successful projects you've heard of, but I think the typical project is more likely to have this problem, although maybe it's just incompetence too.
zanellato19 2y ago
I've seen this sentiment repeated here and I completely disagree. The best leaders are interested in being leaders for the betterment of their team/community, not for the clout. But people who are pushed to be leaders without being interested in that, they tend to suck and make life miserable for everyone else. Leadership is a skill, if you treat it differently, you will suck at it.