One of the proposals was for a elected "technical lead" (or Gracious Umpire Influencing Decisions Officer (GUIDO)) with 4.5-year terms, and came sixth in the vote about options: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8010/#the-role-of-the-gu...
I believe an open-source project is best run as some form of an oligarchy, but with democratic processes for gaining ideas and feedback.
In my opinion, this kind of shift towards complicated government structures is the end of high efficiency in open-source. The thing that makes many open-source projects so great, other than being open, is that they don’t have a burdensome corporate structure breathing down their necks; so they’re able to turn and burn on projects; they don’t fall prey to sunk cost fallacy as often (thinking back to the efforts to integrate Django Channels that were sidelined, or back further to the efforts at GSOC by some developer, 2 years in a row, to add composite key support, which were also sidelined - futile like this turn into disastrous sunk cost slow train wrecks in corporations, but instead teach us what it is that we don’t want in open-source projects); and only the carrot is in play, for the most part, no stick.
Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Fit The Twelfth
Did Guido rage quit because of this?
For such an important project unfortunately I think a certain amount of bureaucracy and paperwork is not only unavoidable but actually necessary and important.
I think it's curious that commenters (this is not aimed at you specifically) don't dare to even indirectly praise bureaucracy without couching it with words like "unfortunately", because there's nothing unfortunate about having a well-described and transparent decision-making process. Python has had bureaucracy for decades, e.g. the entire PEP process, so it's too late for us to be wringing our hands about tainting the Python project with the bogeyman of government.
I'm far from a libertarian so I completely understand and accept why these rules and regulations are necessary but it's still annoying and somewhat inefficient from time to time. For the same reason I consider it unfortunate and annoying when I get a speeding ticket even though I understand why such things exist.
Rules are good when they apply to other people but they tend to suck when they apply to me, mainly because obviously I'm much more clever than my peers and specs and code reviews are for losers.
The reality is that languages are born with a single creator, and spend their adolescence growing under that creator's care, but achieve maturity once they can demonstrate that they can function without such a single point of failure as a BDFL.
— You will be the land, and the land will be you. If you fail, the land will perish. As you thrive, the land will blossom.
— But why?
— Because you are king!
King Arthur and Merlin, Excalibur (1981)
This, concisely, is the problem with kings.
Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
(1 Samuel 8)
