story
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.
But C++ is Stroustrup, Java is Gosling, C is K&R, JavaScript is Eich. Most successful languages kept their internal consistency by being designed by a single person. Historically, these single persons also had mustaches.
Yes, eventually all of those graduated to a design-by-committee approach, but that happened much later. But yes, in that sense, Python is just following the path set by others.
C++ wasn't designed by Stroustrup alone. It's based on C's design.
Sure sometimes you have cleared leaders (see also Perl/Larry Wall) but having a larger group has benefits to see more edge cases (with the risk of committee issues)
So, all around 20 to 30 years ago.
