Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL) is the informal, slightly tongue-in-cheek title given to an individual in the open source development community who is respected, sets general directions, and makes final calls in certain decisions within the scope of a given project. The BDFL is a tacit acknowledgement that communal, consensus-based decision-making within such groups occasionally runs up against obstacles for which a single authoritative voice can be useful. That BDFLs survive and flourish in such 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/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 with the historical meaning of benevolent dictator, which is used in a political context.

List of Benevolent Dictators for Life

• Blender
  • Ton Roosendaal

• 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
  • 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

• 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