I'm ashamed to say I didn't know until TFA that Guido is the BDFL...I actually thought Linus had inspired it, though that's because he seems to be the one who most frequently causes others to invoke it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_Dictator_for_Life
Also kind of funny that Matz is the only creator of a recent [*and major] language that isn't in that Wiki list. Is he really that hands off of Ruby (compared to Guido and Python?)
No, he's very much hands on in big decisions. Proof: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4849646
However, he's certainly easily persuaded by reason, consensus and results and Ruby has now split into multiple competing implementations, so "dictator" has always seemed a harsh term for him to me.
Edit:
Nevermind. Just found the answer to this question on the "Talk" page for that same wikipedia article:
“This is Guido speaking. A few months ago I found an email from 1995 in an old mailbox that I had saved since then, which was meeting notes from one of the first meetings of the Python Software Association (a precursor of the PSF). Nearly everyone present was given a jocular title, and mine was in full "First Interim benevolent Dictator for Life". Once I track this down again, can I post it on the wiki page or should I do something else first? I'm pretty sure that the titles were made up collectively there and that the term did not originate in a Monty Python skit. Most likely inventors of the term are Barry Warsaw or Ken Manheimer, who were both present at the meeting (I think) and have just thekind of mind to come up with such a term. I don't know how the term subsequently became popular -- perhaps it was used in early PSA mailings. Gvanrossum (talk) 04:21, 31 July 2008 (UTC)”
Those Talk pages sure are useful.