Jo Freeman encourages several principles, one of which is:
> Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as that person's "property" and are not easily relinquished or controlled by the group. Conversely, if tasks are rotated too frequently the individual does not have time to learn her job well and acquire the sense of satisfaction of doing a good job.
This is an argument against a BDFL. Note that even in Python development, van Rossum does not always have the final say. Mark Shannon was the "BDFL-Delegate" for the type hints PEP 484.
The main point of the essay is not that overt power is inherently abuse, but rather describes methods to limit abuse of both overt and implicit power. Emphasis mine in the following:
> If the movement is to grow beyond these elementary stages of development, it will have to disabuse itself of some of its prejudices about organization and structure. There is nothing inherently bad about either of these. They can be and often are misused, but to reject them out of hand because they are misused is to deny ourselves the necessary tools to further development.
How so? A boss can only ask for so much before people leave.
(And yes, bad management of the economy can make it hard to find a new job. That's a wider political problem.)
OSS does well with the BDFL model ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life ). The people who practice it best use their authority to set tone and agenda and then step back to let people own their participation. They step back in only when they have to.
In universities today the idea of a "safe space" is in vogue. We might recognize that safe spaces require some sort of protection. It can come from campus police, in online communities it can come from people who are charged with that role, and in companies it can come from managers and executives.
Not all overt power is abused.