Officially replace the title BDFL with Project Lead

an example of where we are currently using BDFL
https://www.drupal.org/contribute/core/maintainers#bdfl

fwiw, changes re: the CWG appeals process don't have any bearing on an escalation path for decisions related to core committing. I tend to think while there is semantic overlap between BDFL / Project Lead, they aren't equivalent. From the linked Wikipedia article, do we know if any other open source software progenitors have adopted a title other than BDFL?

Looking from the point of view of somebody new to the project, wanting to understand how we work and whether to use the product, the term "Project Lead" is far easier to understand and requires less explanation or justification.

Personally, I would be very happy to see a change across the site to Project Lead and I'm sure I could ask for a report creating that listed all occurrences.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to change BDFL to Project Lead. I totally agree that there is a negative connotation, even if many communities historically have used the term BDFL.

I also think we need to elaborate on what those responsibilities entail for Drupal so it's not ambiguous. Our "project" is drastically more than just code. Articulating known responsibilities to the community and Drupal as a product make sense to me.

As someone not directly involved in the project, I would want to see more evidence that the role has meaningfully changed before I would agree that the title should be changed.

For example, is there any way for someone else to become the project lead? Or to appeal a decision of the project lead? BDFL doesn't sound very appealing (because it isn't), but it seems like an accurate description to me.

As a non native english speaker I think that Project Lead is much better and easier to understand than "Benevolent Dictator For Life". I looked up the translation of "Benevolent" in Icelandic and according to Google it doesn't exist! But translating it to German, I somewhat got the understanding that it means "kind" or "good natured" or "soft". Translating the word "Dictator" I get pretty strong translated words that do not have a very positive meaning in both German and in Icelandic. I don't know if this word is softer in the English language, but in Icelandic this word is actually negative and would never be used in any context in Iceland (except for describing history).

Therefore, I think it would be good to change this to a more simpler language "Project lead".

It's only after travelling back to Romania for Drupal Dev Days that I've been struck by quite how problematic the term "dictator" really is. Most of the local delegates here at Drupal Dev Days will have first hand experience of what "dictator" really means and it was anything but positive.

I agree Project Lead would fit better, either way we need to explain it. Sounds like BDFL would fit for those in the know of some other open source projects, but is that the majority of people unfamiliar with Drupal coming to learn about it?

Can anyone describe how a Drupal Project Lead would be different from a BDFL? It is still a lifetime appointment and carries unilateral decision-making authority as far as I can tell.

I think we should change the leadership structure to match if we're going to change the label. Otherwise we're just putting a friendlier face on what is still a BDFL in every meaningful way.

Just out of the core committer offsite this week, we discussed this in the core committer team including Dries in person as well. Dries expressed that (1) he did not use the BDFL title anywhere, he uses "project lead' and (2) that the existing responsibility structures where he is defined as a decision maker are supposed to serve more as a guideline to where to turn when a tie need to be broken, not that he would need to block all of those decisions.

So it would indeed be great to not just update the governance to change BDFL to project lead but also to reflect this in the text. Dries offered to propose changes for this. Not sure if that happens in this issue, but I think this sounds like the best to repurpose for it.

@Gábor Hojtsy, thanks for making this issue. I checked the MR and all the references to BDFL have been changed. I think that this should be committed as is (due to the age of the issue and the sensitive nature of the wording) and that the changes to for the decision making be done in a separate issue. I'll leave this for a few days to see if anyone else agrees or disagrees.

I reviewed this change and it looks good! I'm +1 on committing this. Thank you for helping with this, Gabor!

I went through the changes and the changes look fine. Also noticed that we are replacing specific mentions of Dries in the core governance with Project Lead, which seems fine.

The PACSI matrix still uses BDFL. Maybe that's fine since I'm not sure that anyone has an editable version of that.

Thanks all!

The PACSI is a good point, I just went and updated that too. I don't have the original editable but I could make it look almost like the original :D

Opened #3367191: Speed up decision making: define the project lead as an arbitrator/tie breaker instead of ultimate decision maker for the decision making changes after landing this change here :) I think #3367191: Speed up decision making: define the project lead as an arbitrator/tie breaker instead of ultimate decision maker would be the real big step as it would allow us to speed up making decisions and also to speed up changing our governance (and also change the PACSI likely significantly).

https://www.drupal.org/contribute/core/maintainers still mentions BDFL multiple times, I didn't check everything else in https://www.drupal.org/governance but I imagine other pages are similar. I think we need to re-open this or have a follow-up.

Half of #3327844: Convert governance docs to markdown, redirect d.o page to Gitlab UI as canonical version happened, and the other half should happen eventually as well, which would remove those pages. Since we converted to Markdown, there is no direct way to copy the updated canonical versions to the d.o docs pages. That would be in the scope of #3327844: Convert governance docs to markdown, redirect d.o page to Gitlab UI as canonical version and not here.

Glad to see that this was committed while I was on holiday. Thanks!