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It just dawned on me that CoC docs are basically HR for open source. Point to a violation and voila, that person is gone. “Sorry, nothing personal, CoC violation, there’s nothing I can do”.

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Exactly. Without a CoC the persons making hard decisions have to stand behind them. With a CoC they can hide behind the CoC and wash their hands in innocence. This lowers the barrier for making questionable decisions and overall decreases honesty. We've seen this with the suspension of Python core maintainer Tim Peters.

I had never heard of the Tim Peters incident, but I just googled it. (It's not on his Wikipedia page.)

I found this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1ep4dbt/the_shamefu...

Which points to this:

https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestr...

This characterizes it as completely unfair, and the /r/python community seems to agree.

Is there a rebuttal from the other side?

Wow, I somehow missed all that. That's horrendous. I've always felt that a code of conduct is a tool for bureaucrats to hide behind, and episode doesn't alter my view. Thanks for sharing.

Honestly, this is the first argument against CoCs I've seen that I agree with. They do kinda act as a tool to deflect responsibility.

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