Diane aka the BITCH's definitions
by Diane aka the BITCH July 15, 2005
Get the FloriDUHmug. by Diane aka the BITCH July 15, 2005
Get the Scrunchy facemug. by Diane aka the BITCH July 15, 2005
Get the Keyboard Commandermug. Benevolent Dictator for Life.
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 anarchistic 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 is always possible.
Not all, or even most, open source projects have a BDFL.
Note the difference from the historical meaning of benevolent dictator, which is used in a political context.
List of Benevolent Dictators for Life
Blender
Ton Roosendaal
Drupal content management framework
Dries Buytaert
Linux kernel
Linus Torvalds, explicitly recognising the "benevolent dictator" epithet, e.g. in the interview published August 18, 2004 in Business Week
OpenBSD operating system
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
Samba software
Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell
TTDPatch
Josef Drexler
Wikipedia
Jimbo 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, the Open source implementation of the Windows API
Alexandre Julliard
Slackware, the most Unix-like Linux distribution, known for stability and speed.
Pat Volkerding
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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 anarchistic 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 is always possible.
Not all, or even most, open source projects have a BDFL.
Note the difference from the historical meaning of benevolent dictator, which is used in a political context.
List of Benevolent Dictators for Life
Blender
Ton Roosendaal
Drupal content management framework
Dries Buytaert
Linux kernel
Linus Torvalds, explicitly recognising the "benevolent dictator" epithet, e.g. in the interview published August 18, 2004 in Business Week
OpenBSD operating system
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
Samba software
Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell
TTDPatch
Josef Drexler
Wikipedia
Jimbo 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, the Open source implementation of the Windows API
Alexandre Julliard
Slackware, the most Unix-like Linux distribution, known for stability and speed.
Pat Volkerding
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
by Diane aka the BITCH July 15, 2005
Get the BDFLmug. The world's oldest continually valid food and drink regulation. The reason for the law was to assure that valuable bread cereals would be used for beer brewing.
The actual Purity Law is a result of the Bavarian Duke, Wilhelm IV. He instated the law at the Ingolstadt Parliament in 1516. The reason to institute such a law was mainly the quality of "Beers" at that time. At that time, spices used were fruits, herbs, weeds such as anis, myrtle, oak leaves, ivy (poisonous), along with the poisonous seeds of herbstzeitlosen, raspberries, elderberry, caraway, lavender, dandelion, bay leaves, balm, mint, nutmeg, cherry leaves, plums, rose leaves, rosemary, wild rosemary, schluessel flowers, juniper berries, and lemon were normally used for brewing. Thereby, there were certain reasons for these uses. As an example, some ingredients were used as a substitute for hops, others for the intoxicating effect, others to extend the shelf life. It is easy to see that beers at that time had little to do with what we know today as beer.
The actual Purity Law is a result of the Bavarian Duke, Wilhelm IV. He instated the law at the Ingolstadt Parliament in 1516. The reason to institute such a law was mainly the quality of "Beers" at that time. At that time, spices used were fruits, herbs, weeds such as anis, myrtle, oak leaves, ivy (poisonous), along with the poisonous seeds of herbstzeitlosen, raspberries, elderberry, caraway, lavender, dandelion, bay leaves, balm, mint, nutmeg, cherry leaves, plums, rose leaves, rosemary, wild rosemary, schluessel flowers, juniper berries, and lemon were normally used for brewing. Thereby, there were certain reasons for these uses. As an example, some ingredients were used as a substitute for hops, others for the intoxicating effect, others to extend the shelf life. It is easy to see that beers at that time had little to do with what we know today as beer.
Thank goodness for the German Purity Law of 1516. If not beer would taste like crap and we would die of food poisoning.
by Diane aka the BITCH July 26, 2005
Get the German Purity Law of 1516mug. TINLA ... I am not a lawyer so what I say in this Internet chat room should not be construed as such.
by Diane aka the BITCH July 15, 2005
Get the TINLAmug. AOLese consists of slang that users of the AOL Internet service have developed that were once specific only to the AOL service itself. Many AOLese terms originated with the purpose of saving keystrokes in AOL chat rooms and Instant Messages, (for example, "IM" for "Instant Message", "YGM" for "You've Got Mail", "YGP" for "You've Got Pictures", etc.).
by Diane aka the BITCH July 15, 2005
Get the AOLesemug.