On  16-Jul-2018, at 04:38 , Tim Peters <tim.peters@gmail.com> wrote:

Guido's most visible (well, to us committers) BDFL role has been in "yes/no", "go/nogo" language/library design questions, which don't even overlap with the PSF's proper concerns.

But I'm not sure it's fully appreciated just how active Guido has been in those at times.  The "accepted/rejected" at the end of major PEPs is just a small part of that.  Along the way, e.g., it's been pretty common to see a "Save your breath.  That's not going to happen." from Guido to end a distracting alternative (sub)proposal persistently promoted by one (or a few) very active and/or loquacious posters.

This is a very good point. And it is a role that is not “formally encoded” anywhere, and one that I think cannot be formally encoded.

And actually I wonder whether this role could be fulfilled by any person/committee/procedure other than Guido himself. Which means that in future we should prepare for doing without this role. Which will lead to more contentious issues being put in front of the whatever-body-replaces-the-bdfl, because the early weeding out isn’t going to happen.

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Jack Jansen, <Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl>, http://www.cwi.nl/~jack

If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma Goldman