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On a python developers' mailing list for the core developers, Python Committers, Benevolent Dictator for Life Guido van Rossum has announced that he is stepping down effective immediately and with out appointing a successor.
Now that PEP 572 is done, I don't ever want to have to fight so hard for a
PEP and find that so many people despise my decisions.I would like to remove myself entirely from the decision process. I'll
still be there for a while as an ordinary core dev, and I'll still be
available to mentor people -- possibly more available. But I'm basically
giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL, and you all will be on
your own.After all that's eventually going to happen regardless -- there's still
that bus lurking around the corner, and I'm not getting younger... (I'll
spare you the list of medical issues.)I am not going to appoint a successor.
[...] I'll still be here, but I'm trying to let you all figure something out for
yourselves. I'm tired, and need a very long break.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 14 2018, @02:17PM
People get dictators wrong in a lot of ways. A dictator that makes the right calls routinely to benefit whatever they're leading isn't usually the issue people complain about. In those cases there's rarely any issues with discontent that require the usual human rights abuses. The problems tend to come into it when the dictator starts making mistakes or making decisions that large numbers of people don't like. At least with projects people can just leave if they don't like it.
But, open source has the issue where sometimes people do stupid things and it's hard to push back against said stupid things because it's open.