Dictators in free and open source software
Some people seem to challenge the idea that most (if not all) free software projects need a benevolent dictator—that is, somebody who has the last say on every decision. They are quick to point out Linus Torvalds’ past “mistakes” (see the brackets): using BitKeeper to manage the kernel, not allowing “pluggable” schedulers in Linux, etc. As a software developer, I feel that a dictator is absolutely necessary in every free software project. Here is why.
Respect earned by the BDFL
The first reason is probably the most important one: respect. The benevolent dictator for life (BDFL from now on) needs to make decisions — in fact, a lot of decisions — and at the same time maintain other people’s respect. Decisions are not always popular, and are not always right (especially in other people’s eyes). However, the BDFL needs to have the personal and technical charisma in order to keep the team’s respect. Nobody would ever dream of forking Linux, because very few Linux developers would abandon Linus and follow the forker. This is true for most projects, and that’s why forking is so rare. It must be said, however, that sometimes the BDFL does manages to alienate the development team so much that somebody ends up forking and bringing over most of the original developers. At that point, normally a new project is created (with a new name and inheriting the codebase) and the old one disappears after a while. This is a good thing: the DBFL is there because the crowd wants him or her to be there. It’s a dictatorship, but it’s an odd one: anybody can walk away at any point, create a new state, or join another one.
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