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by duckerude 2895 days ago
This is speculative, but project dictators might be too risky for succession. They can be good at managing the project, they can be bad at managing the project, and there's no reliable way to tell in advance.

Guido was good. If he hadn't been good, Python wouldn't have caught on like it did. If someone who starts a small project turns out to be bad at it, that's no great loss - there are a lot of small projects. You don't see the ones that fail.

But if you put someone in charge of a large project and they mess it up, that's a large problem. It's better to go for a safe option with a reasonable expected value than for the option with the highest best-case value.

1 comments

One can always fork.
IMHO, it is too soon for Python 4.