Thanks for the reply, I could have been more explicit in saying that my argument (at that point) was meant to be narrow, because the parent commenter's starting assumptions were too unreasonable to lead to worthwhile debate.

That said, I think your framing of the Opal/Schito situation unfairly short-changes the pro-Schito side. Granted, while I do remember following the issue at the time, I now only vaguely recall its details. That its resolution isn't more memorable to me could admittedly mean that I think/thought Schito got what he deserved. But I don't (nor would other CoC supporters, I would think) claim that Schito was unharmed -- that's beside the point for now, since this isn't the time for a debate on what's offensive/exclusionary to the trans community. But if we just accept the premise that Schito should not have faced criticism (i.e. "harm") for tweeting (i.e. saying something across in a world-wide public channel) things that a community finds extremely offensive -- then there's no argument to be had.

I personally think that -- at least on the face of it -- what Schito said was more troubling than what people complained about regarding Torvalds and Rod Vagg.

But that issue IMO is orthogonal to the value of CoCs -- there is no CoC that would have stopped Schito from getting angry replies from the trans community. And as I read through that massive pull thread you referenced, I see that many of the prominent maintainers were in a state of reasonable debate and disagreement. Several pointed out that, as offensive as Schito's tweets might have been, there was hardly a "mob" in the pull request discussion; Coraline Ada is far outnumbered by people calling her unreasonable and accusing her of a "witch hunt".

Ada's pull request was closed and its discussion shut down. As you pointed out, there was no CoC before Schito got ripped on, so it is wrong, in a literal and figurative sense. Moreover, the opal project has since created and adopted a Code of Conduct. It is far less than what Ada pushed for. But I'm not trying to defend Ada's CoC, but to point out how it is beneficial to Schito and other maintainers of large, multi-collaborator projects to create and discuss a CoC, as Schito has apparently done, because it protects him.

The opal community was already lukewarm to Ada's complaints against Schito's 2015 complaints. Now anyone who wants to complain to opal's github community will be tolerated if they hate what Schito does on his personal Twitter account:

https://github.com/opal/opal/pull/961/commits/28738a25147ec9...

To me, this effort is beneficial to both sides; it protects community members from being punished by the project for breaking an "unwritten" rule. And it informs outsiders about the standards and decorum of the community, and they're free to join up or pass.

There are more benefits IMO to having a well-developed CoC, but I'll end my already wordy comment by saying that we should evaluate the value of CoC's independently from the political beliefs of their vocal proponents. Schito's situation isn't a good one; I'd like to see examples of how a community's agreed-upon CoC, whether it's the Contributor's Covenant or something lighter-weight, has led to capricious/unjustifiable action by that community.