What does BDFL stand for?
Benevolent Dictator for Life
“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
121–130 of 764 posts
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#122Guido's question gets to the heart of the problem: "So what are you all going to do? Create a democracy? Anarchy? A dictatorship? A federation?" No. None of the above. These are mechanisms which make choices when a choice must be made, even if none of the options is broadly acceptable. An appropriate mechanism for, say, governing a country. Python isn't a country, it's just a programming language, so when there aren'…
Who decides when there's rough consensus or broad acceptance for a change? You have a bunch of people with commit access to the python repository; of course you need some mechanism to decide what goes in.
Rough consensus is what you need here.
Why?
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#123What does BDFL stand for?
Benevolent Dictator For Life
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
If both kids want to eat candy as dinner, is the father blocking that not benevolent because he's outnumbered?
There is a reason kids aren't allowed to legally decide for themselves until 18. In Python land, there is this saying "we are all adults here". Being an adult also means avoiding creating needless drama.
Have you ever tried to debate on python-idea ?
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the very point of a bdfl : it assumes he knows better than others. Debating is for insight and cortesy, not mandatory.
But the B is for Benevolent. When a huge part of the community is against, does that B still stands?
Benevolent: "well meaning and kindly"
You can do something that people disagree with, even something that you think is the best for them, and still be benevolent.
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's PHP and not Python, but every time I read something like this from a major open source figure, I always think of this old PHP mailing list thread: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=50696
I'm sure 'endosquid.com' is currently being by hammered by people wanting to find out who was so rude and unreasonable.
Looks like it has been dead for a bit now.
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was controversial syntax, inline assignment-as-expression. There's always a tension between "keep it simple stupid" and "let's make it better", especially when a large user demographic of Python are non-professional-programmers. Interestingly, C++ is going through the same process, with lots of great ideas being proposed, but the sum total of them being an even more complicated language (on top of what is probably…
> Python 3 breakage and async turned out to be prescient, fantastic decisions. Async maybe. Python 3 breakage? Did you forgot the /s tag?
No, the bad decision was treating bytes and strings interchangeably in the first place. 99% of the hardest to fix breakage was due to that, and it was the right call to pay that price all at once.
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#128Yikes. Python has become so hugely popular and is used for so many different use cases that I fear the ecosystem is going to really struggle to find consistency and direction without a dictator.
Guido is only human. And one day, he will die. (Hopefully a long, long time from now.) Guido is not asking Python to live without a dictator. Guido is asking Python to learn how to live without Guido, so that Python may outlive him. This is a tale as old as time. Apple lives on with only memories of Steve Jobs. The United States lives on with only memories George Washington. For some inspiration I'd recommend listeni…
"Apple lives on with only memories of Steve Jobs."
I think that remains to be seen.
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#129Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#130Open source burnout is real. I'm sure the allure of giving back by creating something useful fades when people constantly criticize your work, especially when you look at the personal and professional sacrifices you're making to produce free software.
One of the pycon keynotes (by Brett Cannon) was on civility in open source:
https://youtu.be/tzFWz5fiVKU?t=2785
If you're a little abrasive (as I am) then I recommend giving it a watch. There's nothing wrong with being right but you don't want to jeopardize the respect and community by not recognizing others in a response.