As I recall, there used to be an item -- a stuffed pumpkin -- that worked like the conch in Lord of the Flies at one Perl hacker's site to control who was authorized to make backups. It served as sort of a physical advisory mutex: only the holder of the "backup pumpkin" was allowed physical access to the tape drives to prevent multiple backups from happening at once.

In the Perl community there is only a notional pumpkin but similar rules apply. Only the person who holds the "patch pumpkin" could merge submitted patches into the mainline Perl tree. The duty of pumpkin holder, or "pumpking", rotates periodically, I guess to prevent the perceived issues with a single BDFL approving changes for all time.