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The only meaningful example of this I can think of is Larry Wall and Perl...but his mistake was in loosening his grip instead of tightening it. Perl6 started off as a utopia wherein Larry was only considered slightly more powerful than any other contributor. This resulted in a revolving door of clowns taking the reigns and rapidly resigning as Larry looked on.

Fortunately Perl5 still does the Pumpking thing which is effectively a rotating BDFL.

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> This resulted in a revolving door of clowns taking the reigns and rapidly resigning as Larry looked on.

I would say that this hasn't been the case for the past 10 years at least. Patrick Michaud has been Perl 6 pumpking since then, to make room for Jonathan Worthington about 2 years ago. Hardly a revolving door and hardly clowns.

Parrot did burn through quite a few pumpkings. I wouldn't call them clowns either, but I do think they led Parrot astray. Obviously Parrot is not Perl 6, but they are closely linked in many people's minds for obvious reasons.

(It's not all the pumpkings' fault, either. I think Parrot would still have been doomed if its leadership were constantly flawless, just because it was designed before Perl 6's object system was.)

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