Ideally, you’ll find that the founders of your project transferred the trademarks and copyrights to a well-organized, transparently managed, public-benefit foundation. BDFLs like Guido van Rossum (Python), Larry Wall (Perl), and Alex Limi and Alan Runyan (Plone) earned their “benevolent” titles with great code, good leadership, and by irrevocably conveying key intellectual property rights to foundations that limited their authority. Their authority in their projects is largely moral. BDFL in these cases translates to “dictator for life — so long as benevolent.”
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