Someone starts a new #FOSS project as a hobby activity. "No one bossing me around like at work, just having fun, do as I wish." they write in the README.
After some time the project starts to get noticed, people request new features, and some Pull Requests are contributed and merged. There's a good vibe with similarly interested devs.
One year later. An unhappy community has formed. People complain about the #BDFL and harsh words circle the social channels.
Is the label of "BDFL" justified?
@smallcircles Every developer whose decisions are not based on democratic voting is a BDFL. At least, that's the way I intuitively understand the term. Also, I'm not aware of any projects that are not led by dictators or oligarchs.
@smallcircles @pixelcode
Is it such a common term these days? I'm of course familiar with it, but in abbreviated form it still confused me, I even had to look it up 😅
Not so much a common term but a common model that people use in practice for their #FOSS project. Without realizing it often, they get into this #BDFL "zone" and then have to deal with the consequences.
There's a lifecycle for FOSS projects, that encompasses more than coding and CI.
At Social Coding movement I defined a term for this: The Free Software Development Lifecycle (FSDL) that takes this explicitly into account.
@smallcircles @pixelcode
Oh… Yep, I remember the term back from the days when Guido van Rossum was appointed as one (and didn't mind much), I suppose much of this theory didn't exist at the time (yet).
Thanks for the link, I'll look into it!
