Talk:Benevolent dictator

Bearian (talk) 15:06, 10 December 2007 (UTC) Oppose merge ... Two different things. One applys more to 21st century technocrats noo? --  max rspct  leave a message  20:28, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
 * The section of this article titled "Open-source 'benevolent dictators'" should probably be merged into Benevolent Dictator for Life. The rest of it should remain at this title, as is. Micro tonal ... (Put your head on my shoulder) 04:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Benign Dictator
I've heard the term benign dictator used a number of times, (and google says I'm not alone). Presumably it's synonymous with "benevolent dictator". Is it just people mis-quoting "benevolent dictator", or is it a valid phrase? Maybe it should be mentioned in the article, as searching wikipedia for benign dictator produced nothing. Alf Boggis 15:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Uncited list of people who have been considered Benevolent dictators
Chiang Kai-Shek, António de Oliveira Salazar, Adolf Hitler,Lee Kuan Yew, Jerry Rawlings, Joseph Stalin, Getúlio Vargas, Benito Mussolini, Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, Augusto Pinochet, Abdul Razak,Deng Xiaoping, Saddam Hussein, Francisco Franco, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Kenneth Kaunda, Anwar Sadat, Juan Perón, Fidel Castro, Park Chung Hee, Kaiser Wilhelm II, James Pepoon, and Edward Gierek —Preceding unsigned comment added by Earthdirt (talk • contribs) 02:53, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Removal of content, why?
Why did User:Homunq‎ remove the content with a link to a out non-existing page Benevolent dictator (software development)? The term "Benevolent Dictator" is a well understood term in open source circles and warrants an entry on Wikipedia. -- Peter Thoeny - 23:37, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, why do people delete this? It's a real term, and documented, so please bring it back. Inserting part of the content into "Enlightened absolutism" is confusing. Philipolson (talk) 01:51, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I am not that familiar with the process of disputing deletions, maybe someone can help? I think the term "benevolent dictator" is common enough in open source that it warrants a place on Wikipedia. For reference, below is the relevant section that has been removed. -- Peter Thoeny - 03:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Personally I think it's because of it's reference to people, like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the muslim leader in the Ottomon empire that seperated curch and state in that country. Also, he played a role in the Young Turk Revolution which seized power from Sultan Abdülhamid II and restored the constitutional monarchy. In July 1908, he played a role in the Young Turk Revolution which seized power from Sultan Abdülhamid II and restored the constitutional monarchy. A very touchy subject these days. START QUOTE2605:6000:F482:CB00:9084:22F5:22E9:953D (talk) 22:50, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Benevolent dictator in open source projects
"Benevolent Dictator for Life" (BDFL) is an informal title, sometimes used humorously, given to an individual in an open source development community, who is usually also the founder or originator of the project.

The term was first coined by Eric Raymond in his book Homesteading the Noosphere, referring to a structure where "a project has multiple co-maintainers working under a single 'benevolent dictator' who owns the project" .

According to Raymond, who cites Emacs and Linux as examples of open source projects led by a "benevolent dictator," this dictator is usually the owner or maintainer of the project, and his dictatorship is mainly used to solve the 'who decides' problem in the open source project.

It should be noted that this is an honorary title, meaning in an open source software community, if a "dictator" began to act irresponsibly, the project would most likely be forked in another direction, or the "dictator" would be fired.

Some examples of "benevolent dictators" are Linus Torvalds for the Linux kernel, Guido van Rossum for the Python programming language , Larry Wall for the Perl programming language , Mark Shuttleworth for the Ubuntu Linux distribution , and Jimmy Wales for Wikipedia.

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